Hyundai's New Push-Button Snow Chains Are Right Out of a James Bond Movie

Hyundai and Kia have cooked up a neat idea that sounds like it's straight out of James Bond or Mario Kart—deployable traction paddles that would effectively give you push-button snow chains. Realistic? Eh. Cool? For sure.

The Korean megacorps seem to be on a bit of an invention kick. Last month, Hyundai unveiled its Uniwheel concept as a radical alternative axle arrangement. Now, we're getting this "Shape Memory Alloy Integrated Snow Chain Technology" idea.

You could almost call this "deployable tire spikes," but that's not quite it. The concept has a series of alloy fingers tucked into the tire and connected to the wheel's hub. At the ping of a signal, the fingers protrude beyond the tire's circumference, becoming traction paddles. It's basically like having instant-on tire chains.

The reason tire chains exist is that when you're driving through something deep and soft (like snow, mud, or sand) regular tire treads can get caked up and rendered useless. And while true paddle tires do exist, they're only for hardcore off-road use. They'd wear down to nothing in no time on a highway. So wrapping shaped chains or cables around a regular tire can essentially give you a temporary snow-digging paddle for extreme snow conditions.

Snow chains aren't exactly hard to use, but they are annoying. When you need to install them, it's usually in ghastly weather when you'd rather not be crawling around on the side of the road. That inconvenience is what Hyundai and Kia are theoretically looking to solve for with their snow chain-integrated tire technology idea here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIxJobVCRTI\u0026feature=youtu.be

As the automakers present it: