2014 Kia Cadenza on 2040-cars

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Kia blind spot monitoring and crash avoidance wins 2020 Autoblog Technology of the Year Award

The Autoblog 2020 Technology of the Year winner is Kia’s blind spot system. We judged the combination of blind spot monitoring and active blind spot crash avoidance on the 2020 Kia Telluride as the best in the industry. The Kia blind spot system won with 204 points, beating the Mercedes E-Active Body Control (189), Subaru DriverFocus (182) and Ram Multifunction Tailgate (139). AutoblogÂ’s editorial staff extensively tested the technologies last fall in Michigan. Three main questions were asked, and editors assigned point values out of 10 based on how well these technologies answered them. The questions were: What is its purpose? Does it work? Does it advance the industry? KiaÂ’s system starts with a traditional blind spot warning light in the side mirror. When equipped with the available head-up display, thereÂ’s a second warning light beamed onto the windshield in your line of sight adjacent to other information. This lets you know if thereÂ’s a car in your blind spot without even turning around to look. It isnÂ’t a feature exclusive to the Telluride (Mazda does something similar), but Kia takes it a step further. The next level of warning is slightly more intense. If you activate the turn signal while the car senses something is in your blind spot, the steering wheel begins to gently vibrate. ItÂ’s not a violent or distracting buzz, but itÂ’s enough to grab your attention. A warning chime is also activated at this time. 2020 Tech of the Year Winner.00_12_25_10.Still030 View 24 Photos The cherry on top is something Kia calls the “Blind Spot View Monitor.” It uses a system of cameras to display a live camera feed of either the left or right blind spot in the central digital portion of the gauge cluster when the turn signal is activated. Hyundai uses a similar system in the Palisade and new Sonata. The monitor in the cluster allows you to see your blind spot from the ground up in the gauge cluster without having to turn your head. The view is dependent upon road conditions, but itÂ’s a nicely integrated blind spot camera feed – the resolution is solid, and itÂ’s still useful to a degree at night. We find KiaÂ’s implementation to be superior to HyundaiÂ’s, where the camera feed takes over the digital speedometer or tachometer when you flip on the turn signal. Kia sets the camera feed in the center screen where the trip computer normally displays.

Salvage firm asks judge to halt rival's removal of capsized ship and its 4,200 cars

SAVANNAH, Ga. — A maritime salvage company is asking a federal judge to stop the Coast Guard and a rival firm from carrying out their plans to remove a cargo ship that overturned five months ago on the Georgia coast. The multiagency team overseeing removal of the South Korean freighter Golden Ray recently announced plans to carve the 656-foot-long ship into eight giant pieces that would be loaded onto barges using a towering crane in the waters of St. Simons Sound near tony St. Simons Island. Removal is to start soon after crews surround the wreck with a large mesh barrier to trap stray debris, expected to take about a month. The Golden Ray heeled over minutes after undocking in the Port of Brunswick on Sept. 8, 2019, and its crew of 23 was rescued. It has been shorted up with thousands of tons of rocks to prevent it from listing further, and its nearly full fuel tanks have been pumped out. A key part of the dispute involves the fate of its cargo of 4,200 cars. The salvage company Donjon-SMIT filed a complaint Thursday in U.S. District Court seeking a judge's injunction to stop any removal efforts. The company said the Coast Guard violated a 1990 federal law intended to improve oil spill responses by allowing the ship's owner to drop Donjon-SMIT as its pre-designated salvage responder. Donjon-SMIT said the ship's owner, identified in the court filing as GL NV24 Shipping Inc., had rejected its plan to remove the ship “in small sections weighing approximately 600 tons (544 metric tonnes)” so crews could systematically remove the thousands of cars still inside the ship's cargo decks. The ship is filled with new Kias and Hyundais built in Mexico, and some cars from other companies, that were bound for the Middle East. The company said the owner instead hired another firm, T&T Salvage, willing to remove the vessel in larger chunks of up to 4,100 tons (3,720 metric tonnes). The multiagency command team released some details of the plan Feb. 5, but has not said what it intends to do about the cars inside. “In short, the cars need to be safely removed to avoid environmental disaster,” Donjon-SMIT said in its legal filing. Campbell Houston, a spokesman for the multiagency command overseeing the salvage operation, had no immediate comment when reached by phone Friday. T&T Salvage did not immediately reply to an email message seeking comment.

Kia Proceed wagon teased, could be sign of things to come for other Kias

One of our favorite cars from the Frankfurt Motor Show last year was the Kia Proceed concept (shown below). It was a rakish, sleek wagon that looked a bit like a smaller, more practically-minded Kia Stinger GT. One of the key questions, though, was whether a production version could look as good, as well as when that production version would arrive. To partially answer those questions, Kia has released a teaser image of the final product. The teaser shows us the rear of the car, and it does hint that this wagon will have a low roofline and an almost fastback rear hatch. This is evident by the small glass opening relative to the rest of the car. There are of course compromises for production. It doesn't look like the rearward side glass wraps around to the hatch glass, and the spoiler is reshaped. The taillights aren't just a single wide bar, either. Now they take a shape closer to that of the Kia Sportage or Stinger. We do like the looks of the wide haunches at the base of the glass, though. Between that and the low roof, this should be a very stylish hatch. The subtle high-mount brake light is a slick touch, too. Kia also announced that the car will be revealed in September and also be shown at the Paris Motor Show in October. We're excited to see the final product. We're less excited about the fact we probably won't get the car in the U.S. The Ceed line of cars has historically been European, and since wagons still aren't popular here, there's not much hope for this to have an American rendition. Stranger things have happened, of course. Hyundai has continued to sell the American Elantra sedan alongside the European i30 under the Elantra GT name. Kia could possibly do something similar. At the very least, there's a good chance that the Proceed's design will influence other Kia models, possibly even some of its crossovers, so that's a plus. View 5 Photos Related Video: