Hyundai’s bluff trick for the design of its cars around the world

VR allows studios in Korea, US, China and Europe to collaborate on the same project while playing with distances and time differences. Explanation using the example of the Seven concept, which anticipates the future Ionic 7 model, expected on our roads next year.

The right to visit a manufacturer’s design studio is not given to everyone. But instead of seeing concept cars, clay models of future models, or walls covered in drawings, we were treated to a real tour of a… virtual world at Hyundai Europe near Frankfurt. A kind of metaverse in design mode, as it takes on a new dimension from the Korean manufacturer.

“Design has been the number one purchase criterion at Hyundai for years,” explains Thomas Bürkle, the designer responsible for the European studio. The ex-BMW has been at the head of a studio that has grown from 10 to 70 employees since 2005 and also signs series models such as the i10, i30, Tucson, Santa Fe, sports models with the N label and a dozen show cars.

Thomas Buerkle

As a big fan of the Citroën SM, the German is anything but a digital native, but appreciates the possibilities offered by new technologies, which he presents to us together with Simon Loasby (Vice-President at the helm of Hyundai Styling) 10,000 km from Germany , in Korea.

A closeness despite the distance they work with every day, as if they were literally side by side discussing the details of a bumper or a dashboard. “Designers cheat a lot,” laughs T. Bürkle. And precisely in order to comply with industrial realities, the development models must be extremely precise, without forgetting to be as beautiful as possible.

Until recently, the techniques of the design studios went through the stages of the classic sketches by hand, then small models to visualize the different projects in three dimensions, followed for the lucky ones by scale models 1 scale. A long and expensive work for heavy (2, 5 tons) and fragile models that have to be taken to the different studios of the brand to get the opinions of the different teams and, crucial step, the validation of the samples.

The “clay model” is then scanned to start working on the digital data for industrialization. But that was before the advent of the 3D visualization studios that have been outfitting the brand since 2015. This enabled the design process to be digitized by 80%. That is good with the arrival of the pandemic, a time when the seven concept was developed in very close cooperation between Germany and Korea.

“It’s less about shortening the development time than about finding the design maturity earlier, thinking about the interior earlier,” explains T. Bürkle. The arguments are also better coordination of work, increased creativity, reduced costs (-15%), less material waste, as well as a reduced carbon footprint from less travel, albeit a somewhat more anecdotal argument on the scale of a car manufacturer whose group produced more than 6 million cars in 2021.

Garage XXL virtual

We enter a huge room of 20 x 22 m, equipped for this purpose from 2017 with an investment of 1.5 million euros. A huge wall of 8K LEDs, 6.5m wide, allows for an initial visualization of the model before it gears up for 3D visualization.

Forty-eight Optitrack cameras are distributed throughout the studio to ensure each participant’s positioning with an ultra-precise active tracking system. 10 people can be around a car projected in front of them at the same time, equipped with an HP Reverb 2 virtual reality headset and HP on-board computer with Nvidia 2080 in a backpack representing one hell of a harness.

Once equipped, we go into a virtual world in which it takes some time to get used to before we feel comfortable. The Seven concept is in front of us in full size, and walking around the model takes time to get used to. The other journalists are visualized through avatars, as is Simon Loasby, who guides us through the owner.

The 10 pieces of equipment are perfectly stowed away

Casque VR HP Reverb 2

In immersion…

With a width of 2,200 pixels per eye, the resolution remains relatively pixelated, while small stutters sometimes appear in the image when turning the head. Still, an impressive rendition that improves as you get closer. There, the painting of the virtual concept reveals all the subtleties, and every detail is refined.

Various different environments can be projected to set the car in a mood that you can choose from. In the absence of even more realistic sensations? Hyundai teams are working on developing gloves to get tactile feel.

Photos of the brand’s bosses with this gear on their dark suits make them look like strange insects, but beware, in this outfit crucial decisions are now being made, in this kind of metaverse of the design. Simon Loasby always carries a complete kit to dive into, which he calls his James Bond kit: an anonymous backpack that carries the computer and helmet and allows him to do a design review at an airport Starbucks!

The modeled interior

For the development of the interior, the designers used a different system with mixed reality technology. The Vario XR-3 helmets are equipped with cameras to visualize the environment around the car (simply materialized by seats) and to be able to see, for example, the people around or insert different environments. With Vive Pro controllers you can act on different elements of the interior, e.g. B. opening a storage space or a door.

Again, the image remains pixelated, but let’s not forget that this is a working tool focused on materials and the speed of their change in the system to test different solutions. This is not data in the form of polygons like in games, but directly NURBS (already directly construction-ready data) used by the Autodesk VRED software.

Enough to push the translation of the Concept Seven into a production car as soon as possible stands to reason, as the resulting electric SUV Ionic 7 is expected on our roads in mid-2023. Based on the Korean group’s 100% electric platform called e-GMP, it’s a very livable large SUV (and equipped with antibacterial materials) with a huge 3.20m wheelbase.

It will have an assertive design as the Ionic models tend to stay close to the concepts they tout, even if the latter are nonetheless very… conceptual. Meanwhile, the really tough concept car unveiled last year at the Los Angeles show is still in the US. We haven’t seen it in real life yet, but we already know it in virtual mode, like many of the brand’s 600 or so designers from all over the world.

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