As fascinating a show as the Consumer Electronics Show is, it’s not immune to hosting weird creations. This year’s no different as Hyundai is bringing with it the Elevate Concept, a prototype emergency response vehicle that can also walk. Yes, you read that right. The Hyundai Elevate Concept is a walking car straight out of a future that’s neither here nor there. If for nothing else, Hyundai says that the Elevate Concept, if it ends up becoming an actual production model, will establish an all-new vehicle category called Ultimate Mobility Vehicle or UMV. Whatever Hyundai’s intentions for the concept are, it’s definitely going to grab a lot of people’s attention when it shows up at CES next week.

Is it a car? Is a car that can walk? It’s hard to put the Hyundai Elevate Concept in a box because it can be whatever your imagination wants it to be. We do know that Hyundai’s going to provide more answers for us beyond the rather short press release it dropped announcing the concept’s presence at the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show. The purpose of the Elevate Concept appears to be clear, too. I don’t expect that Hyundai means Jupiter or some far-flung galaxy, but that description probably involves rocky road surfaces like the one we see in the concept’s teaser photo.

Speaking of which, the teaser also reveals a good portion of the Elevate Concept, including what looks like a relatively skinny body that presumably has enough room for a driver, medical supplies, and, quite possibly, a long stretcher. There’s a hatch in the side of the cab where the Red Cross’ logo can be seen. Judging by its layout, it looks like that hatch opens and closes vertically. As far as the wheels go, that’s the real highlight of the concept. The wheels themselves are small — they barely look like 15-inch wheels — but they are mounted to what can only be described as extendable legs. These legs can stretch out, providing the vehicle significant increases in ride height depending on the necessities of a particular situation.

It’s unclear if the concept rolls along surfaces or if it can literally walk like how we walk in our normal lives. Hyundai should have an answer for us, though it is interesting that the tires don’t appear to have a lot of thread in them. That raises the question of whether the Elevate Concept has enough off-road traction to actually walk like Hyundai says it could.

If you ask the Korean automaker, the Elevate Concept doesn’t just drive or walk. It all sounds great when you read what Hyundai has to say about it, but until we see a proper demonstration of what the Hyundai Elevate is capable of, we’re still going to have more questions than answers about its true purpose. Is it really something that Hyundai’s planning to develop for future real-world use, or is it simply the result of someone’s creative imagination? We’ll know more about the Hyundai Elevate Concept at the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show.

In the meantime, let your imaginations run and see what kind of things you can do with the Elevate Concept. Outside of its core use in emergency situations, I wouldn’t mind having a car that can walk in traffic. That would solve a lot of real-life problems all over the world, wouldn’t it?

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