Kia Readies A New Sub-Brand For Their Autonomous Technologies

Whether or not you are prepared for it, the age of the autonomous car is coming. Kia is preparing itself for it by announcing a new sub-brand that will deal exclusively in autonomous tech.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the Korean automaker announced Drive Wise that will encompass semi-autonomous technologies including:

• Highway Autonomous Driving: Keep the vehicle in its lane on a highway, along changing lanes and passing slower vehicles without any input from the driver.
• Urban Autonomous Driving: Allow the vehicle to navigate through city streets safely through constant traffic updates and GPS/sensors proving information of where the vehicle is.
• Preceding Vehicle Following: A more advanced version of lane-keep assist where the system will monitor the vehicle in front and calculate a path relative to it. This will make it safer for the vehicle if lane markings are obscured by the layout of the road or weather conditions.
• Emergency Stop System: Can direct the vehicle to a safe shoulder in an emergency by determining if the driver is paying attention using face tracking.
• Traffic Jam Assist: Monitors the vehicle in front during heavy traffic to figure out a safe distance and moving into other lanes to move ahead.
• Autonomous Valet Parking: Allows the driver to exit the vehicle and let it park itself via the key or a smartwatch app.

These systems will lead up to Kia launching its own fully autonomous vehicle by 2030.

Kia took a huge step in developing autonomous technologies last month when it announced that it had gotten permission from the state of Nevada to begin testing driverless technologies on public roads.