Automakers have spent decades trying to reinvent the humble car door, but the industry keeps circling back to one big idea: make the opening wider and the motion simpler. Hyundai’s talk of subway-style access fits squarely into that trend, even if the most vivid examples so far wear other badges. Look closely at how rivals have experimented with sliding and portal-style doors and it becomes clear why a transit-inspired layout could be less gimmick and more practical blueprint.
Why carmakers keep chasing a wider opening
When designers rethink doors, they are really rethinking how people move in and out of a vehicle. The goal is not just drama on an auto show stand, it is a cleaner, safer path from sidewalk to seat, especially for families, older passengers, and anyone juggling bags or child seats. That is why so many recent concepts have focused on creating a single, uninterrupted opening instead of the traditional patchwork of front and rear doors with a pillar in between.
A clear example came from Chrysler, which built the Portal concept around a huge side aperture that behaves more like an entrance to a small room than a typical car. The side doors part in the middle to reveal an entryway that measures just over five feet wide, with the sliding panels and structural elements integrated into the edges of the doors so the opening itself is almost completely unobstructed. That layout, described in detail for the Portal concept, shows how a minivan-sized vehicle can feel more like a compact living space when the barrier between cabin and curb is removed in one clean motion.
Subway logic in a passenger car body
Mass transit has long treated doors as throughput machines, not styling flourishes, and that mindset is starting to seep into passenger car thinking. Sliding or portal-style openings borrow directly from subway and light-rail cars, where the priority is a wide, flat threshold that lets people step straight in without twisting around a hinged panel. Applied to a family EV or urban shuttle, that same logic can shorten loading times, reduce the awkward dance in tight parking spots, and make it easier to help children or mobility-impaired passengers without contorting around a B-pillar.
In practice, this approach turns the side of the vehicle into a kind of movable wall, which is exactly what the Chrysler engineers demonstrated with their five-foot-wide opening. By pushing the structure to the perimeter and letting the doors slide along the body rather than swing out, the Portal-style layout behaves much like a subway car, where the floor stays clear and the opening is tall and wide enough for several people to move at once. Even without a Hyundai-branded prototype to point to, the underlying idea of a transit-inspired side entrance is already proven in these concept studies, which show how a car can briefly transform into a platform edge every time it stops.
The packaging trade-offs designers worry about
For all the appeal of a giant sliding aperture, designers and product planners are acutely aware of the trade-offs. Sliding mechanisms add weight and complexity, and the tracks or guides have to live somewhere in the body structure. That can affect crash performance, door sealing, and even the shape of the rear quarter panel. There is also the question of how such doors behave in real-world parking, where curbs, walls, and neighboring cars can limit how far a panel can move or where it can tuck away.
Those concerns surfaced publicly when Audi executives discussed their own future-facing concepts. In one widely shared comment, Hildegard Wortmann reacted to a more open interior layout by praising the idea but flagging the door system as a potential weak point. She described it as “very cool” yet suggested that the door design could become cumbersome to use in tight parking areas, a critique that underscored how even premium brands worry about the everyday ergonomics of radical openings. Her note, posted alongside an Audi concept, captured the tension between show-car spectacle and the reality of crowded garages.
How a Hyundai take could avoid past mistakes
If Hyundai chooses to pursue a subway-style side entrance, the company will have to solve the packaging and usability puzzles that earlier concepts only sketched out. The brand has already shown a willingness to rethink proportions and interior layouts in its electric models, which frees up space in the floor and sills that could house sliding hardware without intruding on cabin room. A carefully engineered track system, combined with reinforced outer rails, could preserve crash performance while still delivering a wide, nearly pillarless opening that echoes the Portal’s five-foot threshold but in a more production-ready shell.
The key will be to treat the door as part of a broader user-experience strategy rather than a standalone party trick. That means aligning the opening motion with flat floors, low step-in heights, and seating that can swivel or slide to meet passengers at the edge, much like a train bench lining up with a platform. It also means addressing the kind of real-world constraints that Hildegard Wortmann highlighted, by ensuring the doors can operate safely in narrow spaces and by giving drivers clear feedback about obstacles along the sliding path. If Hyundai can thread that needle, a subway-inspired entrance could shift from wild concept to quietly brilliant everyday feature.
Why the industry keeps coming back to this idea
Even without a showroom-ready Hyundai that copies a subway car, the pattern across the industry is hard to miss. Concept after concept gravitates toward larger, cleaner openings that blur the line between vehicle and room, whether through sliding panels, portal-style splits, or other creative mechanisms. The Chrysler Portal’s five-foot-wide side entry and Audi’s experiments with open-plan cabins both point in the same direction, toward cars that behave more like mobile spaces than sealed boxes with four small doors.
That shift matters because it reframes what progress in car design looks like. Instead of chasing ever more aggressive grilles or complex lighting signatures, brands are starting to treat access and movement as core areas for innovation. If Hyundai leans into a subway-style solution, it will not be inventing the idea from scratch so much as refining a theme that rivals have already tested in public. The real genius would lie in turning that transit logic into something that feels natural in a driveway, not just on a design sketch, and in doing so, finally making the car door as smart as the rest of the vehicle.
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