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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.

2014 Kia Sportage facelift arrives with updated 2.4L, new grille

The third-generation Sportage has been around for a few years now, but Kia is making some minor changes to its compact crossover for 2014. As expected with a small, mid-cycle refresh, there isn't anything too major to report here, but the important news for the 2014 Sportage involves what's behind that modestly updated fascia.
Kia has revamped the Sportage's base 2.4-liter inline four-cylinder engine to add direct injection, which is said to improve efficiency, although no fuel economy numbers have been released yet. Switching to DI has also increased the engine's output, up slightly from 176 horsepower and 168 pound-feet of torque in 2013 to 182 hp and 178 lb-ft for 2014. Additionally, LX models now receive the sportier shock setup previously available only on EX and SX trims.
More importantly, the base trim level has been dropped from the 2014 Sportage lineup, meaning the car's manual transmission has been axed, as well. Pricing hasn't been released yet, but the 2013 Sportage already undercut competitors like the Chevy Equinox and Toyota RAV4 by thousands of dollars, so even a modest increase for 2014 would still position the Kia rather nicely in the segment.

Automatically efficient | 2017 Kia Optima Hybrid Quick Spin

Automakers are stuck between a rock and hard place with hybrid vehicles. On one hand, efficient hybrids are a necessary evil – for lack of a better phrase – to hit increasingly stringent CAFE standards. But on the other hand, low fuel prices mean it takes an increasingly long time for consumers to see a return on the investment of a hybrid's price premium. These factors have pushed automakers even harder to squeeze every mile per gallon possible out their hybrid offerings. That's inevitably led to powertrain innovations designed to maximize just how long and how far hybrids can run on pure electric power and how often the gas engine can shut down. Occasionally, this doesn't work out all that well – as is the case with the new Nissan Rogue Hybrid, for instance – but there are companies getting things right. Kia, with its 2017 Optima Hybrid, is one of them. Drive Notes Kia didn't try to get too creative with the Optima Hybrid's powertrain for 2017. There's a 2.0-liter, naturally aspirated, four-cylinder gas engine, a 38-kilowatt electric motor, and a 1.62-kWh battery pack. Total system output is 192 horsepower and 271 pound-feet of torque, with EPA estimated fuel economy ratings of 39 miles per gallon in the city and 46 mpg on the highway for a 42-mpg combined rating. That's all spiffy. But taking a six-speed automatic and replacing the torque converter with a clutch and the electric motor, Kia built a hybrid sedan that smoothly intertwines disparate power sources as well as a conventional hybrid like a Toyota Prius, while allowing the Optima Hybrid to take greater advantage of zero-emissions systems. Lift off the throttle and the four-cylinder engine shuts down and lets the 50-hp electric motor handle light, constant-throttle cruising below 62 miles per hour. Dig deeper into the gas, and the petrol powerplant quickly restarts and delivers the bulk of the Optima's power for heavy acceleration and higher-speed conditions. The Optima's back and forth is rarely disjointed – Kia's hybrid feels a lot like its conventionally powered model in normal driving. It's only under sudden, wide-open throttle situations, where the hybrid systems feel caught off guard, that the Optima Hybrid feels flatfooted. A less obvious benefit of the six-speed automatic, of course, is that it leads to quieter operation. There's no rubber-band-like revving like you'd get with a CVT because the transmission can actually shift up a gear.