By Alexander Stoklosa

Hyundai, besides previewing its next-generation touch-screen infotainment system at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show, also whipped up the most futuristic bathtub you’ve ever seen. Okay, so the Hyundai Intuitive Connectivity Concept (ICC) isn’t a bathtub, but it sure looks like one; it’s essentially a glossy white, ultra-futuristic interior mockup that includes a bevy of tech that might actually see the inside of a production car someday. 

The ICC’s key ingredients include a gigantic head-up display, a digital gauge cluster, gesture-based controls, and a central touch screen that has the ability to mimic your smartphone’s screen. Somewhat surprisingly, Hyundai representatives say that everything except perhaps the touchless gesture controls are headed for production fairly soon, although the head-up display, for example, could be segregated to only Hyundai’s premium offerings like the Genesis and Equus sedans.

The core of the system is a smartphone dock with a Mobile High-Definition Link (MHL), which allows the car’s infotainment system to “mirror” what is displayed on the phone’s screen. This means all of your phone’s apps and features are immediately available for manipulation via the car’s controls and touch screen. Compared to Ford’s AppLink app conduit for its Sync system, Hyundai’s mirror approach seems the most future-proof solution to app integration that we’ve seen yet. The latest smartphone basically doubles as your latest infotainment system, in a way. A similar feature based on CloudCar technology will make its way into Hyundai’s next-generation infotainment platform, which likely will arrive for 2014.

The TFT digital gauge cluster facing the driver, like the MHL-enabled phone-mirroring business, also could arrive sooner rather than later. Like similar digital setups from Dodge, Cadillac, and Jaguar, Hyundai’s conceptual version features plenty of reconfigurability. Hyundai reps say the digital cluster—which works in concert with the MHL-driven central touch screen in the ICC—could arrive as early as next year; it likely will hit production around the same time as the automaker’s next-gen infotainment system that it will be an extension of. The head-up display sounds like it won’t be far behind the fancy gauge cluster, and it’s huge: the visible “screen” projected on the inside of the windshield (an angled slab of glass, in the case of the ICC) approximates an 18-inch monitor floating roughly three feet ahead of the driver’s face.

Part of the ICC’s driver interface includes a steering-column-mounted camera aimed at the pilot’s face. This camera serves a variety of purposes, from identification (recognizing one user and changing the car’s settings to his or her preferred configuration, or refusing to start the car for an unknown driver) to driver-awareness monitoring. The system can focus on the driver’s eyes and detect when his or her eyelids continuously droop or close entirely, sounding a chime to stir the pilot from their drowsy haze. There also is a steering-wheel-mounted 3D motion-sensing controller (the dark circular protrusion on the right side of the steering wheel) that monitors hand movements; simple four-axis swipes (up, down, left, or right) can scroll through options on the digital gauge cluster or center display. Moving your hand towards the wheel “presses” the buttons on the screens to select them. We tried this system out and it worked fairly well, though we’re not sure how we feel about dictating commands Gandalf-style to a car. You shall not pass, er, open, Pandora!

• Instrumented Test: 2013 Hyundai Santa Fe Sport
• Instrumented Test: 2013 Hyundai Genesis 2.0T / 3.6 R-Spec Coupe
• Long-Term Test: 2011 Hyundai Sonata SE 2.0T

Finally, the ICC also previewed Hyundai’s cloud-based plans for its next-gen infotainment setup—changes to individual drivers’ settings automatically are stored in the cloud. This way, customers can access their settings remotely via a computer or future versions of Hyundai’s BlueLink smartphone app and alter parameters like which song they would like playing when the car starts, climate-control settings, and the gauge-cluster display graphics. The timeline for these features were a bit hazier than the others, and one Hyundai rep noted that the remote climate-control manipulation might not make it, though the other tricks have a shot. We’ll have to wait and see what Hyundai comes up with, but if anything, the ICC shows it is hard at work at some pretty high-tech cabin tech.

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Car & Driver