Monkey Business

If you wanted to test a car for durability, is a pack of 40 babboons something that would even come to mind?

Fox News has a delightful report about the lengths to which Hyundai has gone to stress test its i30 model (UK cousin of the Elantra):

Weird, but true: Hyundai recently loosed 40 baboons on the latest Hyundai i30 hatchback. The i30 shares most of its essentials with the Elantra, though it's a hatchback in the case of the monkey-infested durability tester.

Hyundai claims it's the first test of its kind by a U.K. manufacturer, implying that some other manufacturers have done this as well. We don't recall the other occurrences, and we think that sort of thing would stick with us.

We could rattle off a dozen puns, but we'll let Hyundai's official statement, courtesy of product manager Felicity Wood, do the work: "At Hyundai we believe in new thinking, which is why we decided to take a new approach with this durability test. You have to be pretty brave to subject a car to the most rigorous quality testers in the world, and the monkeys certainly gave our New Generation i30 a thorough examination! The fact that it survived with only a few scrapes is testament to the way a modern Hyundai is designed and engineered. We really do give a monkey’s about building tough cars!

No, that doesn't make any sense to us, either. That said, it was apparently a good time for the monkeys, and we can get behind that. "For a baboon, to have a car to play with for a whole day is manna from heaven!" said David Ross, manager at Knowsley Safari Park, where the "durability test" was held.

According to Hyundai, the paint was scraped a bit, and the fabric of the seats was "tested" by lunching monkeys, but the car came through with shining colors after 10 hours of prodding, poking, and climbing.

 There's even a video to see just how wild things got:

Hyundai Hydrogen

The Hyundai Tuscon ix is set to premiere next year in 2013. Of all the big automakers planning to eventually release hydrogen vehicles, Hyundai is about to jump ahead of all of them, reports gas2.org

Toyota, Honda, and GM are all planning their hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (FCEVs) to launch in 2015. However, Hyundai will be the first to test the market, with 1,000 units actually going on sale next year.

And while some of the talk about hydrogen has been dismissive, the fact remains that all the

The price tag of the hydrogen Tucson ix will be $88,550. Undoubtedly a steep price, and with the leaps and bounds in electronic vehicle (EV) technology causing lower prices for EVs, hydrogen may have missed the market. Also, if you don’t live near one of the handful of pilot hydrogen filling stations, you are SOL my friend.

Yet for all the naysayers of hydrogen — the fuel cells are expensive and hydrogen fill up stations are not very common–  the fact remains that large amounts of major car manufactures are pursuing the technology. Hyundai has not given details about where the first 1,000 hydrogen FCEVs will ship, but it is most likely that the majority will be sent to Europe.

…hydrogen is a major emerging player in Europe, with FCEVs going beyond cars to include buses and other heavy vehicles. There are a few pilot programs in the U.S., mostly in California and New York, but hydrogen has a much more devout following in Europe.

What would you like to see in the transition off of fossil fuels? Do you think hydrogen is the future of automotive power or will EVs be the ultimate winner? Let us know in the comments.

Brake Overrides Coming to All Models

After numerous and worrisome stories in the news about uncontrollable acceleration, Hyundai has added a new feature to come standard on all models. From USA Today:

The technology lets drivers control a vehicle's speed and stop it in the event of an unintended-acceleration incident, Hyundai said. If sensors recognize that the gas and brake pedals are pressed at the same time, the brake action takes precedence to safely slow the car.

Inability of the brakes to stop the vehicle when the throttle was jammed was a factor in the incidents that led to Toyota's massive recalls in 2009 and 2010.

With Hyundai's system, "any brake pedal input by the driver, even with a runaway throttle condition, completely overrides any throttle malfunction," Robert Babcock, director of certification and compliance affairs for Hyundai's technical center, said in a statement. "It is no longer possible to have increasing engine power once the brake pedal is depressed by the driver."

Hyundai joins other maker who already use or are adding similar systems. BMW has made it standard for several year and all Chrysler products since 2003 have brake override systems. All 2011 and newer Toyota models have it, as well as model-year 2012 GM and Mazda vehicles.

More automakers will likely follow suit. And last month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began reviewing a proposal to require brake override systems on all new vehicles.