2013 Hyundai Santa Fe | Big Game Ad | "Epic Playdate"

Winter Car Care Tips

1. Have tools on hand. For peace of mind, keep an emergency kit in the car. Place items like first aid supplies, LED flashlight, car phone charger, hazard triangles, ski hats, emergency blankets and an ice scraper in the trunk and replenish as necessary.

Tip: It’s also a good idea to become a member of a roadside assistance program, since it ensures you’ll be provided with towing should your vehicle break down.

2. Get a tune-up. Let the pros inspect your vehicle so they can spot potential problems before they become dangerous or expensive. They’ll also top off necessary vehicle fluids and check to make sure the air filter is in good shape for the winter.

3. Consider snow tires. If you live in an area prone to heavy snow or icy roads, it’s a good idea to swap your tires with versions made to handle wintry weather. If you don’t want snow tires, make sure to check the pressure and tread wear on your current tires.

Tip: Keep plastic or fabric bags in your car to store wet or muddy items, then toss in the laundry when it needs to be cleaned.

4. Check wiper blades. Ice and snow wear down wiper blades and can make them ineffective when you need them the most. Replace as soon as you see signs of wear and tear. A good set of wiper blades should last about a year, but less in particularly rainy or snowy/icy climates.

Tip: Turn wipers off after every car trip. If the blades are frozen or stuck, the next time the engine’s turned on, the motor can burn out trying to get the stubborn blades moving.

5. Check fluid levels. Frequently pop the hood and make sure that all fluids and coolants for your transmission, power steering, oil, windshield washers and brakes are filled to proper levels. 

Source: HomeMadeSimple

DRIVEN: Hyundai Builds An SUV Contender

All sorts of sport utility vehicles have come my way over the years for testing, every size and type, and across a wide range of pricing.

So we have some measure of appreciation when a good SUV comes along that doesn’t break the bank, yet which delivers style, features and drivability that are above par. 

Such is the case with the all-new 2013 Hyundai Santa Fe Sport, which has been thoroughly updated to compete with the best of its class. 

Hyundai has been on a tear in recent years, racking up gains in sales and market share, and the third-generation Santa Fe adds another piece to the South Korean’s lineup of expressive yet reasonably priced cars and SUVs. The look of the Santa Fe has gone from dowdy to downright handsome, and the experience behind the wheel was impressive. 

Sport is the shorter version of the Santa Fe, with the seven-passenger GLS heading up Hyundai’s crossover series. Lighter, tighter and better looking, the latest Santa Fe rolls out against a horde of compact and midsize crossovers from just about every automaker in what has become the hottest segment in the market

And typical of Hyundai, the price of the well-equipped , front-wheel-drive Sport base model undercuts most of them, starting at around $25,000. The full-zoot, all-wheel-drive turbo Sport with all the trimmings that I drove had a bottom line just over $33,000, including options. Not cheap, but reasonable considering the high level of equipment and road-going virtues. 

The latest Santa Fe is not merely a usable, practical and responsive crossover, it’s a fairly classy one that never feels like a budgetary alternative. It compares well with segment leaders Honda CR-V, Toyota RAV4 and Ford Escape. 

The base engine is a 2.4-liter direct-injected inline-four with 190 horsepower and 181 pound-feet. Both engines are linked with a new six-speed automatic transmission that performs quite well.
The Sport looks sporty, as it should. It’s about nine inches shorter than the three-row GLS, which is a more-substantial and traditional crossover powered by a 3.3-liter V6. The Sport has also slimmed down a bit, losing 266 pounds through the use of high-strength steel, which also adds to its torsional rigidity. 

Handling is agile for this type of high-profile vehicle, with Active Corner Control providing an extra measure of balance and stability. The steering response can be adjusted three ways: Comfort, Normal and Sport.

The interior is attractive and easy to live with. All the buttons and controls are logically placed and function properly. The optional leather seats in the test Sport were very nice. The back seat adjusts fore and aft, and folds down to create a flat cargo floor. There are also hidden storage bins under the floor. 

-Courtesy of Speed TV 

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Hyundai concept car tracks your eyes and hand gestures

Look over to the climate controls, then take your hand off the wheel and move it slightly upward. The car responds by notching up the heat a few degrees. Sounds like in-car Kinect? That’s the magic behind the Hyundai HCD-14: eye tracking, gesture recognition, and smart software.
These controls, which are possibly the next big thing in dashboard interaction, made the HDC-14 Genesis concept car the hit of the North American International Auto Show — even if most people never got past ogling the impossibly sleek exterior. Some details are sketchy because the HDC-14 was finished just two days before the show and the electrically-powered suicide doors overheated, limiting how many people could actually hop in and see the cockpit.


Here’s how the cockpit control system works:
The HCD-14 has four front-seat displays: a free-form center stack display of about 10 inches, a head-up display, a digital instrument panel, and a driver information display to the left of the instrument panel. A pair of cameras in the steering wheel tracks the driver’s eyes. Once the car sees the eyes glance at an area of the center stack with its climate control, infotainment, phone and navigation areas, it determines which specific control you want. A second set of sensors tracks your hand movement. A hand gesture — such as pointing, raising or lowering the hand, pinching or spreading, swiping left or right, or rotating clockwise or counterclockwise — could adjust the volume, zoom in on a display, flick to a new page, adjust the speed of the fan, or scroll through a phone contact list.
The eye tracking system was developed with Tobii of Sweden. The week before, the company released Tobii REX for Windows 8 PCs that ”enables users to control the computer by combining their eye gaze with other controls, such as touch, mouse and keyboard.” REX is based on Tobii Gaze software announced a year earlier.
Hyundai says the Soft Connect gesture recognition system picks up hand gestures from sensors that look down from the headliner. It works much like Microsoft Kinect gesture recognition.
“You pick a function with eye tracking and then attenuate with gesture recognition,” explains Hyundai designer Mike Barbush. The driver could also choose to refine the selection with steering wheel buttons or voice controls.

Center stack display for the passenger’s eyes only

In Hyundai’s demo, the center stack display shows photos, movies, even interactive card games. Since this is a concept car, the driver and back seat passengers can see it as well, but that’s a small matter of technology that would be changed in a production vehicle.
Similarly, the show car head-up display is in the middle of the windshield (the dark area just above the center stack display in the adjacent photo) and has a wide viewing angle; in a production car it would be in line with the driver’s straight-ahead view. Information for the driver only lives in a fourth display to the left of the steering wheel. In a production car it might be brought back into the main instrument panel, which now is just an analog speedometer, analog clock, and LED bars indicating engine RPM and temperature.

Will the HCD-14 Genesis be a real car one day?

Because this is the HCD-14 Genesis, there’s speculation this is the stalking horse for the next Hyundai Genesis sedan, a luxury car that currently offers most of the features of a $60,000 Audi, BMW, Lexus or Mercedes-Benz for $40,000. This is not the same as, say, the Acura MDX SUV concept shown a few stands over that is effectively the 2014 MDX. The HCD-14 uses a rear-hinged door that automakers call a “coach door” and everyone else calls a suicide door: If you step out while the car is moving or if another car hits the door while you’re exiting, you’re in trouble. There is no center pillar, which affects door-sealing every day and safety if you’re hit from the side.
The concept car is big for a Genesis and the massive front grille is overly large for the car it’s affixed to (look up garish in the dictionary). More likely it could be a competitor in the big-bucks, high-end-four-door-coupe segment pioneered by the Mercedes-Benz CLK and now populated as well by Audi and BMW. Hyundai says it’s rear-drive with a Hyundai Tau V engine.
As for the eye tracking, gesture recognition software on a production vehicle, Hyundai says it hasn’t talked with the government about safety aspects. It’s not clear the government has to be involved but it likely will be under the broad heading of driver distraction. As Hyundai sees it, everything its tracking-and-recognition tools do, you can do with traditional knobs, or by voice recognition. Hyundai could also argue that if you’ve worked with Xbox Kinect, you’d worked with this new Hyundai.
If it’s anything like BMW iDrive, Cadillac CUE, or any cockpit control method of the past decade, it will likely work perfectly in the lab at the hands of the engineers, and take a while for the buying public to warm up.

Source: ExtremeTech

MIX LAB LA 2012 | Recap

Thank you for the great review!

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2013 Hyundai Genesis | "Sweet Spot"

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