If it stops for any other vehicle, you can reach for a Defender. If even that gets stuck, you will pick up the Tiger X1 in the future, if we are to believe Kia and Hyundai. Even the Moon and Mars are within reach.
Last Monday, a combination of curfews and – by our standards – extreme weather conditions caused mini-starvation winters in many Dutch households. After the umpteenth quattro stagioni fallen in the snow, pizza couriers dared not take the road anymore, Albert’s bus slithered back into the supermarket and the stomachs remained empty.
If it had been up to Kia, Hyundai and Genesis, those hardships would have been unnecessary. The Korean cousins ​​present the Tiger X1, the successor to the Elevate Concept from 2019. Admittedly, the Tiger is also a concept and will not deliver calzones for the time being, but in the distant future it should be possible. And not just in a snow-covered Netherlands.
The Tiger X1 is a UMV (Ultimate Mobility Vehicle), a vehicle that has both wheels and robot legs. Those legs take over when the surface for wheels can no longer be used. The name Tiger has nothing to do with the big cousin of your house cat, but stands for Transforming Intelligent Ground Excursion Robot. The device is the fruit of a joint project between Hyundai’s New Horizons Studio in California, software maker Autodesk and design firm Sundberg-Ferar.
Tiger does not turn his leg around for beaten roads, but can also handle very difficult terrain. Then it unfolds four robotic arms and continues its way like a sort of mechanical tarantula, leaving even the very best off-road vehicles behind, Hyundai promises.
Driving such a vehicle will not be that easy, but interested parties do not have to worry about that, because the Tiger is autonomous. Moreover, unlike its predecessor Elevate, it is not intended for passengers, but for transporting goods from A to B difficult. Hyundai and Kia are thinking in particular of relief supplies in hard-to-reach disaster areas. But the sky is not always the limit, because the developers see their Tiger X1 also take confident steps on the Moon or even Mars. We can’t wait for a comparison test with the LRV, three of which are still on the lunar surface.
The Tiger is modular, which means that the fixed undercarriage can be provided with different structures for different tasks, whether it be moon rocks for planet earth or a quattro formaggi for a snowy curfew victim. It is remarkable that people are not yet on the freight list, whereas the Elevate was intended for passenger transport. We ask John Suh, the boss at New Horizon Studios, about the reason for this change of course: “Hyundai is engaged in a transformation to a ‘smart mobility provider’. That includes passenger transport, but also goods. We are also broadening our working area to include mobility by Apart from that, there are many similarities with the Elevate, such as the combination of wheels and legs. During development it has advantages to focus such a vehicle on freight transport. You have less strict safety margins to take into account. But on the longer We certainly want to transport people in this way over time.