For those that are wondering, this is actually a soft-synth. You can download it and run it on Windows or Mac, and it's actually pretty nice, they included a VST version so you can use it in your DAW of choice. I just loaded it into Live 11 without issue, and it sounds pretty nice.
I'm a sucker for these kinds of self-contained synths (think OP-1, I owned 2 at one point), and it would be neat if Kia actually made this. Doesn't look like the plan(?) but maybe i missed it?
I don't know what there is to make. It's a dirt-simple subtraction synth, any Model D clone and a digital sampler could do the same thing (if not more).
I would be really surprised if something like this took off in the greater synth market.
And recommendations for something that will run on a Debian system? This looks like something that I'd like to try, but it doesn't have to necessarily be the Kia implementation.
Both of those are excellent introductions and exactly what I'd recommend for Linux users too. I'd also add VCV rack if you want to get more experimental with stuff, it's very deep/complicated but also quite rewarding to tinker with.
This is the kind of thing Nokia used to put out when their main product was stagnant and they were inept at software, but also paying hundreds of millions to ad agencies and design consultancies to come up with brand coolness band-aids.
> Kia and Hyundai are putting out some of the more exciting products right now in the car industry
The most exciting news out of Hyundai is that they are winding down ICE development to maintenance only. There will be no next generation ICE out of that company. I think that they are the first major automobile manufacturer to make such an announcement. Not since WW II have we seen a major automobile manufacturer make such a pivot.
tbf, that's not really surprising : EU recently banned sales of ICE engines starting by 2030.
I think a lot of carmakers are going to make this move. Given the time needed to develop those projects, I think really few carmakers are working on new ICEs right now.
I kind of think them building a deep product design bench to pull off their design revolution would also lead to these kinds of projects because those groups love this kinds of side projects.
You actually don't want many "car guys" in these design groups unless it's for a sports/enthusiast car, so some non-car product design people were likely hired, a good thing.
Not a car person but we have a 2012 Kia Picanto without any visible software, just a CD radio and it's one of the better cars I've ever used for prolonged time. Yes, it's tiny and cheap, but wildly better than the other comparable ones I've driven.
Their Telluride is one of the hottest selling SUVs, it's pretty difficult to buy. Hyundai/Kia seem to be on a tear right now with their newer vehicles.
I just bought a Telluride on Monday and love it. It is the highest ranked car on Consumer Reports across all vehicle types. I don't think this is an indicator of a company in trouble.
Pilot’s length, width, and height are within an inch of each other that seems like the same size category to me. 2022 Telluride is 196.9“ X 78.3” X 68.9” 2022 Honda Pilot is 196.5” X 78.6” X 70.6” and a slightly more expensive MSRP.
The RAV4 is noticeably smaller and cheaper, but still an SUV and seemed like a useful benchmark.
PS: They sold 75,129 in 2020, and 58,604 in 2019, so I don’t think they expected it to tank to 50k in 2021. Still probably supply limited in 2021 but so was just about every car company.
The RAV4 is a behemoth, having sold over 10 million over the years.
Yes, the RAV4 is a benchmark to compare the Telluride to, but they ARE in both different cost brackets and categories. Pilot seems to be a better benchmark.
Another useful benchmark is that for 2021, Toyota global sales were almost 9.6M, Kia was almost 2.8M.
Honda Pilot is a Midsize Crossover SUV, like the Telluride, and had 2021 sales of 143K in the US. Honda global sales were 4.5M in 2021.
So the Telluride can still be a success for Kia, while selling a fraction of the units of the RAV4
Good as in competitive with (or superior to) ICE cars.
That reliability survey is flawed, it includes issues that are fixed as a condition for delivery. Tesla owner satisfaction is one of the highest in the industry.
Wouldn't that be a consistent factor across cars at a certain price point, though? You could reasonably compare Model 3 owner satisfaction to Lexus IS250 owner satisfaction, for example.
Very smart and admirable for taking a risk. When you look at what Kia has done with their cars in the last decade, they really are an ascendent company.
I go on about Yamaha as a company a bit, but when I saw this, I saw a future Yamaha level of design. Cars are just rolling smartphones now anyway, and even if this instrument becomes a loss leader, it may move Kia from a car company to a lifestyle brand.
The pink noise stuff is more interesting than the woo implied by it, since it's the basis for lofi beats, and ambient/minimalist music in general is arguably hitting a new crest probably not seen since the early 90s. I just paid an unreasonable amount of money for tickets to see Olafur Arnalds, and saw a symphony do a Philip Glass premire just the other week. The old musique concrete concept was full of pretentious silliness, but the core idea of 'music as an experience' seems to be blooming just now. If you listen to electronic music and DJs, a lot of it is ephemeral, and this Kia instrument for personal sound design seems like a tool for that same experiential music.
Their appeal to science on this one is neither here nor there for me, but I've done some reading on the topic to support my own music experients. These were the papers that I used to justify buying more VCOs for my modular rig, and they may be on to something:
Worst case, it's a spectacular flop, a bunch of them end up going for pennies on ebay, and a few years later some poor kids somewhere pick them up and use them the way they did the Roland 303.
I think you're missing the point, it's freely downloadable as a standalone windows/mac executable and that's the entire product. There's no physical product.
It is downloadable as a VST at the moment, correct. But are you certain that they aren't planning to release the hardware for it?
I could be totally wrong, but some wording on that page makes me believe they are planning to release a hardware component to it. This one quote specifically:
"The Kia instrument features a touchpad keyboard [emphasis mine] so you can play as you go. You can create endless patterns, save your loops, play them back immediately and modulate the sounds with the dials. The key buttons light up when played, which offers a quick visual orientation."
I think the point might be that you load it into something that is touch screen. This is quite weird of an announcement in general though, so I won't totally rule out that they're gonna make something real in this realm.
I thought so too, but the wording of "touchpad" instead of "touchscreen" was a bit too weird.
I agree though, you are most likely right. Wouldn't be the first time a promo website decided to put a bunch of weird phrasing for whatever reason.
Even on that same kia page, they talk about 4 "neuroscientific" parameters for the synth. I was expecting some randomized (ala arturia microfreak) or neural-net related things. Turns out, they were referring to things like BPM.
> The old musique concrete concept was full of pretentious silliness
This is really cruel to the very smart, creative people and quite a lot of spirited women who led that movement. Éliane Radigue's works alone are a monumental achievement in music. The entire power electronics and noise genres owe a huge debt to the pioneers of musique concrete. They were playing with new media and giving voice to the industry of cities. I don't see anything pretentious or silly there.
J'accuse aside, and while (later) minimalism and experimental stuff are favourite genres of mine (incl. Derbyshire, Carlos, Velvet Underground, and TG), and I do like some artists who happen to be women, I thought musique concrète was more an artifact of criticism and not the expression of musical competence and technique.
Cruelty to me is the cynicism of having open minded and generous audiences sit through self indulgent performance art and then telling them it's redemption for their anxiety about being provincial and unsophisticated. Always struck me as a mean trick. However, maybe it's my bias, as if modern power electornics and noise musicians owed me a debt, I would probably write it off.
I've been thinking about how asmr relates to music quite a lot lately. Some people think it is just a weird thing, but asmr videos of people brushing onto mics are getting millions of views. I think it should rightly challenge our assumptions about what music is. I won't be surprised to hear these sounds filtering into popular music. In some ways it is similar to how harsh clipped digital distortion is fairly popular all over TikTok.
Also, I just found Olafur Arnalds from his music cribs tour on Spitfire Audio [1]. It seems he has collaborated with them on some virtual instruments. There are several videos of him on their channel including breakdowns of some of his music. The last couple of weeks I've been down a YouTube rabbit hole on these modern composers (mostly for film and television).
I downloaded and installed it so you don't have to. Review:
It has 8 built-in samples that play continuously. It also has a knob to add filtered white noise, which also plays continuously. Then there's a monophonic subtractive synthesizer, which I was unable to get to make any particularly nice sound. If I hold down a key for a while and then press a different one the sound unexplicably stops.
This a pretty lame instrument, which is beaten-out in both features and quality by the stock instruments that your DAW came with. Even if that's the 2002 version of Fruity Loops.
My impression (not having read about the history of this thing) is that this was some Kia employee's side project that some genius executive was impressed by, in the same way that my mom is impressed when I put two windows side-by-side on her computer.
This is…a little weird…but car companies have all sorts of goofy branding exercises, like fashion collaborations with Louis Vuitton and…uh…steak knives.
Porsche is a luxury brand like Louis Vuitton, no wonder they collaborated. Porsche even has a subsidiary Porsche Design that designs luxury goods.
Louis Vuitton has made coffee cups, dumbbells, pizza boxes, etc. Fashion houses and luxury brands are notorious for those sort of things more so than any car company.
Disappointing that for all the work they did, they didn't look at an actual piano to get the key geometry right. Specifically, black keys aren't centered between the two adjacent white keys, they are offset to allow all keys (white and black) to be approximately equal width at the back of the keyboard.
I started to point out that that one isn't correct either (notice how the back part of the E key is significantly wider than the back part of the F key, which is wrong), but then I noticed that the article says this (mentioning me):
"Update 13 October 2021: This method is great for getting piano key proportions very near accurate with a few very simple steps. Thanks to Rob Brown who added more details in the comments that will be helpful to anyone looking to make a highly accurate model (e.g. if you’re trying to align a drawing with a photo)"
The actual proportions are described in the link above (I wrote a little algorithm to do it accurately for my music app)
A little off topic, but I have a Kia and I feel like they made all the locking and unlocking behavior as unintuitive as possible. I always find myself pushing more buttons than I think should be necessary. And at the same time, if I walk behind the thing with the keys in my pocket, half the time it opens the trunk completely unbidden.
Also, the infotainment system is constantly yelling at me about contact downloading from my phone and I have no idea how to turn that off.
Weird combination of hard to operate and way too proactive. I wonder what kind of team would produce this Frankenstein behavior.
The stuff that needs to work does work though, and the price worked for me.
I love the car itself; it is cheap to run and reliable, but, oh, boy, does the software ever suck. I have never seen a car with so many software bugs. Two examples (out of many):
The car is set to unlock the doors when I shift to Park, but if a passenger manually unlocks a door while I am still in Drive, it does not unlock the other doors when I do select Park. I need to shift to Park, back to Drive, and then back again to Park to let the rest of the passengers out.
If my phone's Bluetooth is connected to the car stereo, and I forget to turn off the head unit before turning off the ignition, then next time I start the car, the radio starts playing at maximum volume.
> If my phone's Bluetooth is connected to the car stereo, and I forget to turn off the head unit before turning off the ignition, then next time I start the car, the radio starts playing at maximum volume.
I'm renting a Fiat at the moment and it has this same bug. It's so infuriating that I stopped playing music in it entirely.
The problem is the difference in level between different sources, combined with the car starting to play music from a different source when you start it up again.
I have my phone playing music over Bluetooth at a normal volume (pretty quiet, in fact), and then I leave my car, come back and start it and some random local radio station starts playing at an ear-splitting volume.
Can’t speak to the other problems, but the trunk thing is a handsfree feature that opens the liftgate if you’ve been away and then return with the keys. Not sure why they didn’t go with the standard “kick under the trunk” handsfree thing, though.
The supposed "story behind its creation" strikes me as unsatisfactory, pseudo-scientific marketing bullshit. That said, I'd love to know the real story of how such a random project got this far. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4egz2QiKzE
Polestar released a video with similar bullshit. They said their turn signal sound was inspired by nature. They recorded a twig snapping in Sweden. The result nothing special and something you would just create on a computer.
Lincoln did something similar with the Aviator. They worked with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra to record sounds for the car. I’m a fan! I think it sounds pretty good, and I like the extra touch. I care about sound though… for a luxury car I expect the acoustic environment to be notably pleasant.
> Unique chimes recorded by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra will provide musical alerts for drivers of the all-new Lincoln Aviator; the musicians recorded symphonic chimes for about 25 features in the Aviator
That's the sort of thing you do just to say you did it, not because of the actual quality. Like hiring "Ivy League" consultants to generate fake credibility.
While I do think the new kia logo is an improvement over the old one. Every time I see it I think its the Nine Inch Nails logo. I've never said it out loud but my wife mentioned the same thing to me one day.
I'd be in favor of letting mandatory vehicle noisemakers use something this. That'd be a nice selling point. "Our electric cars dont sound like shit!" Cool.for users, cool.for the world.
A lot of electric vehicles sound like coil whine. Shrill high pitched whine. The new Amazon backup sound is, i think, chirps of pink noise; could be much worse I dont want arbitrary sound- because folks have no taste & would pick obnoxious garbage- but letting folks mix together some decent ambient sounds- that sounds acceptable, to fulfill mandatory minimum pedestrian notification requirements.
You need some kind of engine sound, a bird chirping faster won't get pedestrians to realize that there's a car approaching. Unfortunately, we kinda associated whining with electric/futuristic cars - it's basically the coconut effect [0]. Additionally, you also need to be able to modulate the sound to the speed. Some manufacturers (like Porsche) get quite creative within those bounds, but it's going to be hard to create something really exotic given these constraints.
I did specifically think of birds as a pretty obvious exception. Even things like waves crashing, volcanoes bubbling, cafe chatter would have to be region specific, in case that matches the background. Limiting ourselves to abstract sounds is an interesting limitation.
Had no idea that there needed to be modulation based on speed, but that totally makes sense, matches what I hear. Thanks for sharing!
Cars making their normal combustion engine noises are already a serious source of noise pollution. The solution can't be to make noise pollution required by law. That's one of the stupidest ideas in the world.
Stop running cars in areas that are easily accessible to pedestrians. There are already plenty of streets pedestrians have to use an overpass or underpass for. It's even safer and doesn't ruin the auditory environment.
> Stop running cars in areas that are easily accessible to pedestrians. There are already plenty of streets pedestrians have to use an overpass or underpass for. It's even safer and doesn't ruin the auditory environment.
I agree with separating cars and pedestrians better, but the solution can't be to make life harder for the pedestrians. Cities I've visited where you have to use an overpass to cross every road are awful to walk around.
When I read "instrument" and "kia" in the same headline I was expecting something creating music of creaking, ratting, flapping, grinding, whistling, or scratching sounds.
I am an average runner with 30-40 MPW. It is a genetic disorder that I discovered after my mid-20's. My heart rate will hit 178-180 with exercise, but otherwise its always below average.
This sounds about equivalent to what I do. Last time I was at the doctor I was measured at 56, but when I measure myself I usually come in closer to 60.
For noise generators, "MyNoise" is still top dog, at least I've not seen better/easier and more accessible for the amount of control and quality on offer.
Dial in your distant thunder and rain on roof with the mixer controls. Free on web, and there's native apps. Interesting technical details about the recording and microphones too if you explore the website.
I tried this. It’s unfortunately particularly unimpressive.
There’s a total of 8 samples, they’re all just nature samples - it’s a basic subtractive synth, it did work ‘out of the box’ in Logic; that’s kinda my whole review. It’s nothing I could see using for anything, unfortunately
- though it is small, so I don’t see myself removing it.
And am I the only one who thinks the website makes it look like a hardware synth? It took me a while to even get it was a VST.
This is what happens when you hire a German designer from Audi and promote him to CEO when the design thinking he brings along with him actually generates remarkable results without the soul killing side effects of the business people before him.
I'm OK with a car company doing things that are not aimed expressly at making cars. I happen to like what they've done with the last ten years of cars leading up to:
I just wanted to add on to your comment - if someone's looking for a high-quality design house/organization (though not in the typical sense), I'd highly recommend looking at Type7. They're based off Porsche from what I understand, and while most of their content appears to be on Instagram (and in some ways they're more a collaborator rather than a design studio), they've got an absolutely amazing aesthetic.
I couldn't see whats more in it than a super basic synth with nature samples as a background layer. What am I missing? They have like 5-6 seconds in the video pitching envelope components such as sustain and decay, so it gives me the impression that there isn't much innovation here.
Honestly its the road noise thats even louder than the engine in new ICE cars. All I hear when cars pass is the rushing wind sound from a 4000lb chunk of steel rolling on cement, maybe a small hum. Old beater cars, dudebro trucks, and ricer/sports cars are the exceptions of course, but EVs aren't going to quiet the freeways like people expect imo.
That's my point exactly. My neighborhood is getting a little louder every day as more of my neighbors buy EVs. One of my neighbors has a regular Toyota Camry, and the other has a hybrid Highlander. The Camry is really quiet, just tire noise, couldn't tell you what the engine actually sounds like. The Highlander howls as it comes down the street with some sort of demonic choir sound. And my wife's Bolt isn't a lot better.
As you say, only modded and older cars make enough sound cruising at 25mph to hear over the tire noise.
I agree that the sound difference is likely overstated, but there are two additional factors:
* Drag coefficients are significantly lower in EVs, partially because you smooth out the undercarriage and generally get more freedom in aerodynamic design.
* Due to range concerns, EV tires tend to be more focused on low rolling resistance.
Both of these should gently reduce road noise, if I were to speculate?
You would think but IMO its not like Teslas are any quieter than a camry going down the road so I don't think its a significant factor. If you have one of those fat sedan style Teslas they sound like any new SUV coming down the road too.
I mean I hear this road noise on my 25mph residential street too. Commercial roads that go 35mph are downright loud too from that constant drone of road noise.
My experience says otherwise. Our neighborhood is getting more EVs regularly, and you can really tell the difference. If a regular car is driving by my house and an EV is a block behind them, guess which one I can hear? The EV. And Hybrid Toyota Highlanders and RAV4s are the worst, though a Bolt isn't exactly quiet.
Road noise sounds the same from an ICE or an EV for the same weight car in my experience, provided its not something old or sporty with a throaty exhaust. A new economy car just petering along you aren't going to hear any engine unless you step on the throttle.
No but I live next to a residential road and you can hear passing cars go hhhhhHHHHHHHHHhhhhh clear as day as they go by. Like I said above I only hear engine note on something old/sporty/motorcycle though.
when thinking about attracting those you want to care for your products - for top of funnel - often smart to start by creating experiences that appeal to them - & helps you easily refine the messages in your product marketing -
This seems pretty nice, but it seems an odd choice to release it for two platforms that typically don't have touch input. Using a cursor (even on a laptop touchpad) feels clumsy to me. I wonder if they plan an Android or iOS version, or even (unlikely I know) a physical device?
Oh, wow; this was certainly unexpected. How neat. Hopefully something similar makes it into their vehicles. Imagine how interesting it would be to play around with making music (safely!) while you drive.
It's not a particularly great instrument, but it does work on Linux if that's your bag. Just need to install it into a Wine prefix simulating Windows 8 or later.
Looking at the contents of the macOS installer (I haven't tried to run it), it seems to be both. Looks like it's based on https://www.cabbageaudio.com?
It's called marketing and this is an attempt to make Kia look like they care about "the nature". It's obviously trying to appeal to a younger demographic that does no longer care about cars and are worried about the future of our planet.
> And it worked; it got onto Hacker News, though that may not be the target demographic.
Exactly.
> though that may not be the target demographic.
I'm thinking this is exactly one of their target demographics for a campaign like this. Aware, forward-thinking and often young to mid-life consumers. To Kia, every car buyer is a good car buyer. To the planet, it's quite the opposite.
It's making me want to buy a Kia even less. Though, I'm likely not the target demographic; being an aging curmudgeon who usually buys used, repairs himself, and runs into the ground before buying again.
Creating a new car produces massive amounts of carbon pollution.
For a mid-sized average sedan the pollution created from finding and smelting ore to the massive amounts of energy and water required during production it takes around 45/50k miles just to offset production alone, and that's assuming the new car does not use any energy.
Add to this that producing batteries is even much more taxing on the planet both in terms of resources and toxicity.
Add to this yet another thing: unless the energy that's produced wherever you recharge your car isn't coming from renewables the gains in pollution are further limited.
So, to conclude: unless you commute a lot, plan to keep your car for a long time and you live in an area where there is a huge % of renewables the, by far greenest solution is to buy a used car or keep your one, even if it has an old polluting engine, it's gonna pollute much less than producing a new car and using gas and coal to power it
You really are a man full of arguments, aren't you?
According to EPA the average car during its lifecycle produces 38 metric tons of CO2 if it reaches 200k miles.
Producing a car alone, producing it, without putting a single mile in it produces between 7 and 35 metric tons (based on the size of the vehicle).
If you can do very basic math you can understand that the greener option is ALWAYS to keep your old car, unless, again, you do really a lot of miles and electricity in your country is mostly (70%+) renewable.
But that truth is hardly said loud, because it doesn't sell lots of cars and doesn't make enough money.
Meanwhile we're killing the planet even further convincing places like southern europe to buy electric cars even tho they mostly use gas to produce electricity in the first place.
It is better to talk about the lifetime of a car vs the lifetime of your use of a car. An new electric car has better carbon emissions than a new gas car after 13k miles.
Your point of purchasing a "used car" as a better option reduces carbon emissions by removing vehicles from the system.
Don't buy new cars as a Co2 mitigation strategy is unrealistic and against buying electric is just pedantic and your argument is frankly misleading.
I can't wait for the cognitively dissonant marketing campaigns for EVs in the next 10 years telling me to buy more new globally produced things that are marginal upgrades to what I already have here locally.
OTOH when is the last time you've ever seen an ad for a Trek or a Schwinn? This is the time when bike marketers can come and eat everyones lunch with simple facts and logic. Much better to only need 15 pounds of metal and your own power to move around than 4000lbs of metal and power from a natural gas plant to move yourself around. Hopefully we see more ads for bikes in the coming decades.
I've heard recently that instead of getting electric motorcycles, the market is much more focused on e-bikes because there is less regulation around them.
Yep. Motorbikes are surprisingly cheap, e-bikes are surprisingly expensive. The difference though, at least in the UK, is that for a motorbike you have to shell out more money and time to go sit a series of driving tests before you're allowed to ride one; whereas for an e-bike you just strap on a helmet and go. I'm not surprised they're a lot more popular.
The driving test is a chicken and egg problem for the motorcycle. Can't buy one and learn on it because you need to be licensed to ride on it. Need to learn on it to get the license. For cars at least you know someone who will lend you a car in most cases, but for motorcycles you are beholden to these motorcycle schools that are going to want a few hundred at least. All this for a vehicle that will in all likelihood probably be stolen by two people and a pickup truck or regularly backed over. I am envious of the lane splitting they are able to do in CA. You basically opt out of traffic when you chose to ride a motorcycle. Plus 100mpg.
I live on a bike street that is a neighborhood street designated as a bike route. There's a slight hill, not crazy steep but its noticeable while biking, it has been interesting to see how many ebikes I have started to see out the window especially this last winter.
People already know what bikes are, but until the government starts prioritizing non-car transportation and build convenient cities like the Netherlands, no one will ditch the comfort of a car to ride on a non-protected bike path with nowhere to lock up your bike at the destination.
I've been riding my bike these days and its been fine if I find some residential street that runs parallel to the stroad, or I just bike on the stroad's sidewalk if it can't be avoided. In my city at least that's legal as long as you aren't biking recklessly, and I stick to jogging speeds and will just walk it if there's some foot traffic, so its no more dangerous than going for a run at that point.
I bought a Subaru car a few years ago and am now treated to their magazine in the mail every few months. It's pure "greenwashing": lots about hiking, camping, dogs, beer, arts and crafts... nothing about carbon emissions, exurban sprawl, or traffic safety.
I've always cringed when I saw Subaru's PZEV ("Partial Zero Emission Vehicle") badges. What the heck does this mean? Sure, the engine generates exhaust, but the bumper doesn't?
I've always wondered what's the reason Yamaha is so big in music. Like I get that Japanese big conglomerates are known for being, well, conglomerates with tons of different product lines. But how did Yamaha (which is not really that big) become a big player in niches that are so different?
It's separate companies sharing a name and owner, but de facto independent one from another. E.g. Yamaha motors is completely split from yamaha (even tho they are the biggest shareholder).
Their guitars are sleeper greats too. They punch way above their weight class in the budget range, and their high end stuff really holds its own against Gibson, Fender, and even PRS.
Why does Tesla sell surfboards and The Boring Company flamethrowers? I’m guessing this R&D will show up in vehicles eventually as some sort of selectable custom soundscape.
I almost wonder if someone was making the background sound for a car commercial and ended up building this, and of course, that would make it Kia IP to release.
Incidentally, Tesla cars come with a music production app called Trax [1] pre-installed, which is actually just a re-skinned fork of LMMS [2]. Perhaps Kia might port this to their in-car infotainment systems in a similar way?
More accurately, they collaborate on chassis and powertrain development and share the result. More so than many other manufacturers, true, but sharing component development isn't uncommon even between manufacturers without any ownership interest in each other.
"...particularly connecting the occipital and frontal parts of the brain, where our emotional control center is situated, and the areas connected to increased creativity and flow states."
Just.. just stick to making cheap cars? This is the kind of thing that makes cars not cheap: things that have nothing to do with cars. Why are there people being paid to do this? Just make cheap cars.
I'm a sucker for these kinds of self-contained synths (think OP-1, I owned 2 at one point), and it would be neat if Kia actually made this. Doesn't look like the plan(?) but maybe i missed it?