Cars and traffic lights are about to have a conversation
After showing us how kinetic energy can be recycled through an electric suspension system, Audi is back at its geekish game with a system that notifies drivers on when the traffic lights will turn green.
Audi calls its vehicle to infrastructure program – aka V2I – a 'world first', yet secretly, we know it's just to give Audi drivers an edge during traffic light battles against AMGs and Ms.
Joke aside, using onboard LTE data connection and Traffic Technology Services servers, the car 'talks' to the existing infrastructure, getting real-time info on the traffic grid's status, therefore knowing when a given traffic light turns from red to green.
According to Audi, the driver sees how much time is left until the signal changes to green in the instrument cluster or on the head-up display, provided the car is fitted with the latter.
Ultimately, the system has the potential to both reduce fuel consumption and CO2 emissions by smoothing out traffic.
Hopefully, drivers will change their behavior aided by the V2I system, which will lead to less braking and therefore, a better traffic flow around the city. We guess you can always patch up the lack of common sense with technology, right?
Audi doesn't name the cities where the system will kick-off, but the carmaker's PR voice tells us the feature will be available on '2017 Audi Q7, A4 and A4 Allroad models built after June 1st, 2016.'
If the initiative proves successful, the peeps over at Audi will be looking at how they can further integrate the technology into navigation and auto start/stop systems.