Hasta La Ideas

Hyundai Mobis, a Hyundai Motor Group supplier subsidiary, has developed a zero-turn system for cars. Like Mercedes, they demonstrated the tech at CES; but unlike Mercedes’ brutish “G-Turn” technology, the Mobion concept car equipped with the system actually turns the wheels, all independently of each other, enabling the car to move in unconventional ways.

For instance, here’s it doing a zero-turn:

A crab walk:

A pivot turn:

And “diagonal driving” at cruising speeds.

The Mobis system seems superior to Mercedes’. Surprisingly, it’s “ready for immediate mass production,” according to Vice President Lee Seung-Hwan, Head of Advanced Engineering at Hyundai Mobis. It’s also got a feature that Mercedes doesn’t, called “Ground Projection.” Because the vehicle can move in unconventional ways, for safety’s sake it can literally project its intentions to nearby pedestrians:

“This feature complements the e-Corner System’s movement capabilities by providing the vehicle’s direction of travel. For instance, during diagonal or lateral movement, Ground Projection can illuminate the vehicle’s direction on the ground, utilizing lights across a 360-degree spectrum. MOBION can even leverage Ground Projection to generate crosswalk stripes for pedestrians to use when they are detected.”

No word on when this will actually appear in a production vehicle.