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Hyundai, Kia and U of M studying 'highway hypnosis'

Next up on the hot-button list of things that can kill you behind the wheel: "highway hypnosis." That's the zombie-like, autopilot phase you get into on a long highway drive when there isn't much to distract you, like curves or traffic. Digging further into what it is and how to combat it, Hyundai-Kia engineers and the University of Michigan are commencing a study that will measure brainwave activity in order to track the body's slide into highway hypnosis.
We're not sure how much overlap this has with Mercedes-Benz's Attention Assist, which tracks more than 70 in-car parameters to determine when you're not focused on the road anymore. That system is billed as an alarm against fatigue, in our experience it does more than that - if you use your phone while driving, for instance, it will chirp.
They don't know what form a warning system will take yet, but Hyundai-Kia plans to develop a method for warning drivers when they being to zone out. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there were more than three thousand deaths and nearly 400,000 injuries due to distracted driving in 2011.

2019 Kia Niro EV First Drive Review | How to have fun in a practical EV

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — The Kia Niro EV rounds out the Niro trio, and is the most impressive on paper. With the same 64-kWh battery and 201-horsepower electric motor as the Hyundai Kona Electric, it's rated at 239 miles of driving range between charges. Granted, 239 miles is less than the 258 miles the Kona EV gets on paper, so we were eager to see what the differences were between the similar EVs. After spending an icy, frigid weekend driving (and falling in love with) the Hyundai Kona Electric around Michigan we hopped on a plane, and headed to Santa Cruz to try out the 2019 Kia Niro EV (and to escape the cold). With a longer wheelbase and greater overall length than the Kona, the Niro EV offers a little more rear legroom — about three inches extra. As a 6-footer, I didn't find it uncomfortable to squeeze in behind an even taller driver. This bodes well for those of us with car seats we need to install in the back of our EVs. The Niro EV also boasts more luggage space than the Kona, with 18.5 cubic feet behind the rear seats, and 53 cubic feet with the seats folded down. We were impressed by the large rear opening and the spaciousness of the cargo area. The driver's seating position took a lot of adjustment to get comfortable in, a problem we didn't have in the Kona. No matter what we did, we felt like we were sitting too high up in the vehicle, but eventually it began to feel natural as our focus shifted from the interior around us to the road in front of us. Still, every time we got back in the car, we felt the need to try to improve the seating position. At least the seats were comfortable and supportive. Thankfully, Kia didn't go overboard with the styling of the Niro EV, and that goes for the interior, too. The oddest thing is the big rotary gear selector. While it looks like it would be in the way of the cupholder, it didn't interfere with grabbing our coffee, and it's more intuitive to use than the Kona Electric's separate PRDN buttons. The rest of the interior is about what you'd expect. There's a lot of plastic, a center stack that's maybe just a little too busy with buttons and controls, a well-incorporated touchscreen and a digital instrument cluster. It's quiet when you turn it on and begin to drive away, as you would expect. Listen carefully and you'll hear the spacey hum of its pedestrian warning system at low speeds, which shuts off as you approach 20 miles per hour.

Kia confirms $1B factory in Mexico to be completed in 2016

Kia is the latest in a string of automakers to announce plans to build new or expanded factories in Mexico. The Korean company has signed a $1 billion deal to establish a plant in Monterrey in the state of Nuevo León, with construction starting in late September. If everything proceeds on schedule, the facility should be complete in the first half of 2016 and be able to produce 300,000 vehicles a year.
The $1-billion investment will create a "new, highly automated manufacturing plant," according to Kia's announcement, a facility covering 1,235 acres of land. Confirming earlier rumors, Kia will produce compact models there, but the company won't reveal specific model names, just yet. When complete, the factory in Mexico will boost the automaker's annual capacity to 3.37 million vehicles a year with 1.69 million of those in Korea and 1.68 million abroad. It will also join Kia's plant in Georgia (where the Optima and Sorento are made) as the business' other North American location.
Kia hasn't kept plans for the Mexican factory a very close secret and openly admitted it was "being considered as a possible location" to Autoblog. The country was chosen partially because of its free-trade agreements (read: NAFTA), that make it less costly to move models elsewhere, not to mention its easy access to the North, Central and South American markets. The new plant should also alleviate some of the tight supply issues Kia has had in the US.