America's tech geeks got a sneak preview of the interior of Audi's all-new A3 at last week's consumer electronic's show in Las Vegas.
Ostensibly on show to headline a host of Audi future tech, the neat new cabin showed off an e-tron Spyder-inspired minimalist look with a host of new features that even Audi's A8 flagship doesn't get.
Some of the key features included moving the touch-pad input feature onto the top of the navigation scroller and a slim-line, pop-up MMI screen featuring 3D graphics. So clean were the screen's graphics that they inadvertently gave a very clear picture of the A3 itself, even though the Golf-based hatchback isn't due to make its debut until the Geneva Motor Show in early March.
And it's clear that while the exterior of the big-selling small Audi has a distinctly evolutionary feel to its three-door body, the in-car electronics are nothing short of revolutionary.
At the centre of the new dash is a seven-inch screen that's only eight millimetres thick and the movement of the touchpad (which can read your scrawl in Latin, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Greek or Cyrillic characters) to the top of the MMI's control wheel is a masterstroke.
The pad has also been called upon to do more work.
Instead of just inputting letters for the navigation system, it will now also be used to swipe through albums, just like on an iPod. It also carries over an innovation from the recent A4 upgrade, where the volume control also doubles as a toggle to move forward and backwards for radio stations or music.
But where the longer lead and development times of the car industry has lead to accusations that in-car electronics were years behind consumer gadgets, Audi proved that it, instead, is waiting for broader technology to catch up to it.
The A3 will be the first Audi to use its new MMX board, which is basically an Nvidia Tegra chipset in the centre of a single, plug-in, plug-out board that will be able to fit into all future Audis and will control the infotainment and instrument displays. While the A3 will use a Tegra 20 chip, Audi already has a fully developed Tegra 3-series equipped board ready to go.
It brings the instrument displays to a new level, including a rotating 3D image of the car which comes up to show you exactly which part of the car you are adjusting at any time, be it the air conditioning, the audio or the ambient lighting.
The A3 will also get rid of the need to carry phone cables in the car, because it will debut the Phone Box in the centre console. This system essentially creates a near-field contact zone in the console that diverts signals from the car's more-powerful antenna into the phone's weaker antenna, so the driver not only has less need to use the phone manually, but also has fewer dropped calls.
The reason the more-modern, more-powerful chip isn't being used in the A3 production car is that the world around the hatchback isn't actually ready for it. The Tegra 3-series board is designed to take advantage both of the all-new, high-power, low-energy processor from Nvidia (that the tech giant itself only showed at the same show) and upcoming 4G or LTE radio communications networks.
Yet the Audi systems come ready with voice command systems that can hook directly into Google's database and then into the satnav. The theory is that if you're looking for something, anything, you just ask - the database finds the closest options in real time and navigates you to whichever one you prefer, all without your hands leaving the steering wheel.
It can even do this with Google's StreetView system, so you can see exactly what your target building or car park looks like.
While Audi already offers the voice command search, much of the newest tech it displayed at CES will need to wait for the widespread introduction of the 4G network to become fully functional. There is one German city (Cologne) with an operational 4G network, though several others are in the pipeline and several US cities use it.
4G, or LTE (for Long Term Evolution) will punch through up to 150Mbit/second, which is about 11 times quicker than current 3G systems. It's enough speed to enable one passenger to conduct a video conference in the back seat while another one watches YouTube movies in the front and the driver uses GoogleEarth for navigating.
The first carmaker to offer in-car WiFi, Audi has been working with Nvidia and Google since 2005 and isn't finished yet.
"It doesn't have to be Google. You have the possibility to use any database in the world with our system," Audi's Chief Executive Electronics Engineer, Ricky Hudi, confirmed.
"Today, we are fine with the Google database and see no reason to change it, but the option is there. When the 4G coverage is strong enough to make sense for our customers, we will be there. We are prepared for 2013 and ready to go."
Admitting there could be some enormous roaming charges hitting Audi customers with the sheer volume of data the new processor has the potential to utilise, Hudy said there had to be significant changes in the way telcos charged for their services.
"There is a lot of movement in data plans around the world and there will be a lot more in the next years around the introduction of LTE."
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