The upcoming Santa Fe SUV – which will be released in selected markets beginning Q1 2019 – will feature a more touchy-feely technology. Their smart fingerprint technology will allow the driver to unlock the doors and also start the vehicle. Oooh.

There’s a sensor of the door handle which will unlock the door if the correct fingerprint data already encrypted within the system is detected. Another sensor on the ignition button does the same before cranking the engine.

Sounds like lightweight tech? Maybe, but the fingerprint reading will also match it to a person so driver preferences like seating position, audio and air-cond settings et. al. may also be automatically set. As for security issues, Hyundai assures that forgeries and faked fingerprints are prevented by something called ‘capacitance recognition’ that detects differentials in the electricity level in various parts of the fingertips. The chance of a false-positive reading is only 1 in 50,000 or five times more effective than conventional vehicle keys. Like the odds now?

However, we’re not quite sure of Hyundai claims of this being a ‘world’s first’ technology. Didn’t BMW have something similar previously? And in a time when any respectable smartphone already has fingerprint scanning to unlock it, when can we see a car that does facial recognition?