Face Unlock Patent Awarded to Hyundai and Kia, Here's How It Works

There’s not much hiding you can do when the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is involved. Hyundai and Kia are planning to blow their competition out of the water when it comes to vehicle ease of access. Face unlock, although not named like this, has the potential to make getting into your car and driving it a lot easier.

We’ve seen carmakers implement all sorts of workarounds for the car key. Cards, bracelets, personal identification numbers (PINs), fingerprints, and phone apps are all in use today. They’re not all popular, but it’s nice to have them. Each solution is looking to solve a problem car owners might have, but face unlock seems like the easiest and safest route to go on.

According to a recently disclosed USPTO filing that you can find attached down below, Hyundai and Kia will implement the face unlock. When and on what cars is not known yet, but it’s happening. The patent is a solid confirmation.

The new system works fairly simple. It’s based on a camera cleverly hidden in the B pillar. This activates when the owner (or another pre-registered driver) touches the door handle. The camera scans your face and, if it recognizes you, lets you in and allows you to start the engine and drive off. There’s also a visual confirmation besides being able to open the driver’s door – a green circle appears on the B pillar.

Unfortunately, it doesn't open the door for ease of access. You'll still have to use the handle for that. The face unlock just works with the locking mechanism and makes sure the alarm isn't activated.

Don't worry. It doesn't work if someone's showing a picture of your face. The system also comes with sensors that need to detect depth and a 3D shape.

Face unlock alternatives

But we know new technology doesn't always work as intended. No worries, the cars that’ll have this face unlock will also benefit from a fail-safe. Unfortunately, this requires a smartphone. But, let’s be honest, who today leaves somewhere without their phone? Using your own device, you’ll be able to send a signal to the car and it’ll prompt you back a gesture that you must make in front of the camera. According to the documents and as you can see in the gallery, this can take the form of showing a certain number with your fingers. If the car’s camera still doesn’t work at this stage, you’ll also have the chance to use your phone’s camera to show your face and unlock the car.

If the authentication process fails, the system will store the image of the person who’s trying to get inside the car and send it to the owner’s phone. In case of theft, this might be helpful as it can constitute proof.

While there’s no firm confirmation yet for any Hyundai or Kia car to use face unlock, we know Genesis, Hyundai’s version of Toyota’s Lexus, will gladly implement this technology. They even named it last year: Face Connect. The company planned on using it on the GV60 – an EV6 with some enhancements and a different look inside and outside. With reviews of the electric crossover pouring in recently, we’ve seen it work, but it’s not yet available in every market. The GV60 also has a fingerprint reader that’s inside the car. That can serve as a fail-safe in case someone’s forcing you to open the car. They can’t drive it without a proper read of this biometric parameter. But you need to activate the two-step starting sequence or it won't request a fingerprint read.

It's a shame that Hyundai’s Ioniq 5 and Kia’s EV6 are not available with this technology now, but we remain hopeful. We might see it after facelifts or on future models, considering the Ioniq 5 already borrowed the digital side mirrors from Genesis. But for now, it’s only available on the 2023 GV60 – for which pre-orders just opened.