New A8 to drive itself — slowly

While rival Mercedes-Benz revealed its vision of the autonomous car with the futuristic F015 design concept at this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Audi chose to demonstrate that total autonomous driving control is not in the distant future but tantalisingly near.

Within reach of your fingertips, in fact.

Audi technicians and a few journalists drove – well, rode — inside an autonomously controlled A7 Sportback known as Jack for almost 900km from California’s Silicon Valley to Vegas in Nevada, where Audi revealed a second driverless vehicle concept based on the Prologue show car.

Not coincidently, California and Nevada are the only contiguous states which have passed laws allowing autonomous vehicles on public roads. The only other US state to allow self-driving cars is Florida.

Billed as the world’s longest autonomous test drive, it showed that 'piloted' cars can handle day-to-day driving, and provided a preview of technology that will become production reality in Audi's next-generation long-wheelbase A8 within two years.

“We are very close to production,” Audi's R&D chief Dr Ulrich Hackenberg told journalists at the CES. “We will be on the market with larger of A8 end of next year.

“We’ve shown that there is a one-and-a-half to two-year delay between concept reveal and production, so you can expect…

"This is innovation that can happen rather than may happen. We are ready for piloted driving on public streets.”

Hackenberg has seen the research and knows that 30-50 percent of Audi’s customers will opt for piloted driving features. Currently, 66 per cent of A8 sales in the US include adaptive cruise control.

Advancing to autonomous driving (piloted) control is not a stretch by any means. Technologically, autonomous piloting will control steering and will use Lidar to ‘identify’ objects as far as 150 metres in front of the car. Lidar casts a wide 150 degree field of view and works with the radar and sensors already comprising Audi’s adaptive cruise control and driver-assist systems.

Of course, the right hardware is important. The key, however, is the processing power and Audi has turned to Nvidia to supply its new Tegra X1 capable of machine learning and artificial intelligence, according to Ricky Hudi, head of electronics development at Audi. “It becomes increasingly intelligent.”

However, don't expect to be able to travel from Sydney to Melbourne while surfing the net on your iPad – if indeed the technology becomes available in Australia any time soon.

It's not yet clear where it will be become available initially, given autonomous cars are not yet legal even in Germany, but the new A8 LWB will be able to drive itself only at speeds up to 60km/h.

“We will start with 60 km/h," Hackenberg told Autoweek. “The next step will be something more. The next step will be under highway conditions. Full autonomous driving, that will take some time. You need more sensor clusters and there are some legal points to consider.”

Audi says most average daily city commutes occur at low speeds, so the first autonomous production Audi will be able to drive itself in traffic jams, for instance, as well as handle other urban aspects of driving like finding a car park and parking itself.

Audi’s autonomous drive strategy is a bold statement of technological prowess and brand identity. Make no mistake, Audi is determined to define itself by introducing leading-edge technology and the new A8 will bring our first taste of autonomous driving capabilities that will eventually be offered across its range.

However, we’re still talking about a rather basic autonomous system in that the car will drive itself in stop-go city traffic and overtake slower cars and trucks on the highway, but the human driver must sit behind the wheel and be ready to take control.

In other words, don’t think about climbing into the back seat for a kip.