2014 Kia Cadenza on 2040-cars

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Kia Cub Concept wanders over from Seoul

The little machine you see above is the Kia Cub. The Cub first debuted at the Seoul Motor Show, but this is the first time we've been able to see it ourselves in person, so we pointed our camera lenses its way and got to snapping.
According to our men on the show floor, the Kia Cub Concept is "quite good looking," with a squat and funky shape that looks mostly ready for production. With a five-door hatchback shape featuring reverse-opening doors (we'll resist calling them suicide doors... whoops...), this machine doesn't seem to share much design DNA with current Kia products. And that's fine. As much as we like Kia's swoopy line of cars and 'utes, a little shakeup every now and then never hurts.
We're sure the diminutive hatchback would be a fun car to pilot, with 204 horsepower and 195 pound-feet of torque coming from its turbocharged and direct injected 1.6-liter four-cylinder engine. Kia quotes a 0-62 time of 7.7 seconds and a top speed of 143 miles per hour. Sounds to us like it could be a worthy competitor to such successful sporting hatchbacks as the Mini Cooper S and Fiat 500 Abarth.

Hyundai phone app adjusts EV performance settings

The latest automotive tech frontier is phone control. A few car companies have launched or are about to launch the ability to use your phone as your key, such as with the Tesla Model 3 and the just revealed 2020 Lincoln Corsair. Aside from being convenient, the technology offers the ability to save settings for different users. The latest application of the technology comes from Hyundai and Kia for electric cars, specifically letting users set performance parameters and bring them from car to car. The app allows the user to adjust several performance settings including amount of torque available, speed limits, throttle response, regenerative braking response, climate control energy use and acceleration aggressiveness. Basically, you can decide whether you want all-out speed, long-range, or a blend of the two. The more detailed settings are also nice compared to choosing between three or four pre-set blends of performance like on many cars. And of course parents would surely like the ability to limit speed and power for new drivers. What's perhaps more interesting are the ways settings can be brought along and shared. Hyundai suggests that when using a car-sharing program, drivers could have their settings uploaded to whatever car is being used so that you don't have to readjust things each time. People could also share their preferred combinations for others to use, possibly offering people less compromised combinations than they otherwise would have come up with. Hyundai could also offer recommended settings or tweaks to combinations to optimize efficiency or performance in certain conditions. It's all interesting stuff, especially for control freaks and tinkerers, and we'll see it in the near future. Hyundai and Kia say it will show up in future vehicles, though an exact date wasn't given.

Kia GT4 Stinger concept headed for Detroit with 315 rear-drive horsepower

With reveals expected to include the 2015 Ford F-150, the new Chevrolet Corvette Z06 and the high-strung Lexus RC F performance coupe (among many others), there are plenty of vehicles we're looking forward to seeing at the Detroit Auto Show. But now, with a rendered teaser image and short press release that includes some savory details, Kia may have just hit the top of our list with its GT4 Stinger Concept. Not even looking at the above image (which you can click to enlarge), Kia managed to grab our interest with just one sentence in said release detailing the car's powertrain: "A turbocharged 2.0-liter that pumps 315 horsepower to the rear wheels."
This low, wide concept has the face of a Kia-fied Audi R8, but the previous teaser stated that the concept will be a 2+2 hatchback. There is little other information to go on, but we'll see the concept car live in just 10 days. Until then, scroll down for the brief press release.