Hyundai's Mobion Concept spins, crab walks, does doughnuts, is incredibly cool

The most amazing thing I saw yesterday at CES was the Mobion Concept by Hyundai-owned Mobis, a parts supplier focused on electrification, connectivity and autonomous systems. It spun 360 degrees. It moved laterally. It moved diagonally. It did a slow-motion doughnut. I didn’t catch the very beginning of the presentation, so perhaps I missed the julienne fries.

The trick here is the “e-Corner System,” which is a next generation beyond similar, previously seen tech. In short, all four wheels can turn in their wells to be perpendicular with the heavily modified Ioniq 5. This allows for the “Zero Turn” or the ability to turn 360 degrees in place rather than make a million-point turn on a crowded street or parking lot. The other e-ticket ride is Crab Drive, which lets the car move perfectly laterally. This would come in handy when parallel parking obviously, but as Hyundai Mobis showed, also in those moments when you didn’t get quite close enough to the drive-thru window or parking lot ticket machine. Now, you might note that the Hummer EV has something called “Crab Walk,” but that is more similar to the Mobion’s Diagonal Drive function, which as the name describes, turns all four wheels in the same direction to move it diagonally.

Making this possible is Mobis’ “In-Wheel” technology that integrates braking, steering and suspension function into the wheel itself along with, most crucially, each wheel's own electric motor.

Other innovations introduced with the Mobion are lights projected on the ground that inform those around the car with arrows which balletic exercise it’s about to perform. It can also generate crosswalk pinstripes in front of it to let pedestrians know they’ve been detected. Hopefully other drivers honor that sidewalk, but to ensure they do, the Mobion also has an LED display on the rear bumper that can tell tailing drivers there are pedestrians or other obstacles ahead. There is a similar LED display up front.

Rounding out the package are lidar sensors in the roof and adjacent to each headlight that facilitate the myriad new movements, especially the diagonal ones, so that the car can perform them by itself.