New Hyundai reinvents steering wheel
● Concept shows brand’s future ● Car controlled by joysticks
ASK Hyundai’s head designer Luc Donckerwolke to show you a vision of the company’s future, and he’ll point to this: the Prophecy. Auto Express can tell you that this car could make it into production but its importance doesn’t end there.
The concept introduces a new modular platform that will underpin a whole host of electric vehicles from both Hyundai and its sister brand Kia within the next few years. The platform is as significant to the Koreans as the MEB electric-vehicle architecture is to the Volkswagen Group.
The Prophecy’s grand unveiling was due to take place at March’s Geneva Motor Show, which for obvious reasons did not go ahead. But in order to take a closer look and learn more about the Prophecy – plus Hyundai’s plans for the car – Auto Express has been for an exclusive drive of the concept around the halls of the Nuremberg Messe exhibition centre, in Germany.
The car’s ‘suicide’ doors open gracefully, allowing easy access to the cabin, where you can find a comfortable and slightly reclined position in the driver’s seat. But instead of the expected steering wheel, all there is is a dashboard that’s littered with a collection of digital displays.
The dashboard rotates at the touch of a button, and an additional slim shelf under the curved screen turns upright to reveal the fully digital instruments. Yet there’s still no steering wheel. In its place are two joysticklike handles, one mounted on the door, the other on the centre console.
While crawling around the big halls and figuring out how to steer the sleek, fivemetre long show car with joysticks – which makes it feel like you’re in a video game rather than a car – we can’t help but be reminded of the handles of a vacuum cleaner. Perhaps it’s one area of the Prophecy’s design that needs a rethink.
Two things that remain conventional, however, are the pedals for accelerating and braking. But given that the car we’re in is a priceless concept, there’s little to be gathered from what the Prophecy actually feels like to drive at the low speeds we’ve been limited to; what’s rather more important here is the radical new cabin.
There’s a nice balance between old and new inside the car. The digital hub of displays contrasts with the lovely blue-andgreen tartan design that features on the doors and seats. One thing you won’t notice are the double-glazed windows, which do not open. Instead the Prophecy uses an air-filtration system, which pumps clean air into and around the cabin when it detects an increased level of particulates inside, even when it’s charging. Clever stuff.
That tartan theme is echoed in the back of the car, with the absence of a B-pillar, the flat floor, and flush dashboard giving the Prophecy a wonderfully airy feel inside. But how much of this will actually make it into the production car remains to be seen.
“The dash rotates at the touch of a button, and a shelf turns to reveal the fully digital instruments”