This week’s SmartCar roundup features an intelligent car seat for kids, an electronics giant entering the EV race, and cheaper EVs.

iAlert

If you have a little kid, you probably have a car seat in your vehicle.  It’s the law, after all. But sometimes little ones can get rowdy and escape their car seat without your knowledge.

iAlert is a smart car seat that alerts you in real-time when your child has escaped, or if your child is left unattended (yes, this happens!) in the seat.  It connects with a mobile app that assists you in installing the car seat, monitors the temperature in the vehicle, lets you store up to 12 emergency contacts right in the app, and alerts you if your kid gets out of the seat while you’re driving and if you left your kid unattended.

iAlert is the first connected car seat that not only keeps your kids safe, but also monitors them.

Samsung applies for EV patent

South Korean company Samsung has applied for a patent in the US and South Korea related to electric vehicles such as engines, on board electronics, and tires.  It would appear that the device maker is looking to manufacture electric vehicles, Samsung has denied plans of entering this space.

What this patent filing means is that Samsung is broadening its market.  Samsung is known to manufacture smartphones, TVs, and memory chips, as well as components needed to manufacture these devices, especially since the growth in these markets are slowly stalling.  Smart cars, however, is a promising market that’s yet to reach its full potential.

Tesla Model E

Tesla is readying a cheaper model of its popular EVs.  The Model E is expected to be unveiled by 2016 and be commercially available by 2017.  But reports state that we could be seeing the Model E by January 2015.

Tesla design chief Franz Von Holzhausen dropped the hint in a recent interview with Autobuild, indicating that the Model E could be unveiled at the Detroit Auto Show in January 2015.

The timing certainly seems right.  Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently revealed that the world would get a glimpse of its third-generation vehicles in 12-18 months, with the vehicle sporting a larger battery for better mileage.  This statement made by Elon, plus Von Holzhausen, have people believing that cheaper Tesla EVs are in the near future.  But Tesla Communications’ Patrick Jones clarified in an email that Tesla’s timeline hasn’t changed and it is not definite that the company will be revealing anything at the Detroit Auto Show.