Unlock And Start The Hyundai Santa Fe Using Your Fingerprint

If your bank account is fat enough to handle the purchase of a shiny new Bentley Bentayga, you can get Crewe's opulent SUV with an optional capacitive fingerprint scanner for the center console to hide and secure your precious valuables. The good news is you won't have to rob a bank to have this tech in your car as a mainstream brand will soon implement fingerprint recognition technology in a far more attainable SUV.

Hyundai has announced the 2019 Santa Fe will be offered with this system starting the first quarter of next year, but bear in mind availability is going to limited to certain markets. The technology developed by the South Korean marque is more advanced as it allows owners of the midsize SUV to open the doors and even fire up the engine by simply using their fingertips.

How does it work? There's a fingerprint scanning sensor located on the door handle and another one on the start/stop button. After matching information of the driver settings with the fingerprint data, the 2019 Santa Fe will automatically adjust things such as the side mirrors and the seating position as per the driver's saved preferences. Eventually, the technology will be further developed to enable automatic adjustment of the steering wheel position, cabin temperature, and all sorts of other functions.

While this may sound like a gimmick created just for bragging rights, Hyundai points out fingerprint technology offers an increased level of security thanks to capacitance recognition. It refers to the system's ability to detect differentials in the electricity level in various parts of the fingertip, so faked fingerprints and forgeries won't be an issue. As a matter of fact, Hyundai mentions fingerprint tech is up to five times more effective than conventional keys as the likelihood of misrecognizing another person's fingerprint is 1 in 50,000.

Not only that, but the fingerprint scanner features support for updates and that means it will only get better and more accurate with time courtesy of further developments. The new Santa Fe will lead the way, but other models will probably get the tech sooner or later, and it would make sense for Hyundai's flagship SUV, the Palisade, to eventually get a fingerprint scanner as well.