Audi AI:Me uses VR to make autonomous driving less boring
Cars
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We're here at CVS 2020 taking a look at the Audi AI ME concept, Audi's vision for an urban city vehicle of the future.
Now, it's fully electric and designed around car sharing.
Now, the things you need to know about the power train are pretty simple because they're not really the point of this exercise.
The powertrain is a 168 horsepower electric motor mounted at the rear axle.
And there's a 65 kilowatt hour electric battery that's running that system.
Now, range hasn't really been specified because Audi doesn't really think that's the point of a vehicle like this.
Being designed as a car share vehicle, the person who's in it doesn't actually own the battery anyway.
And you're only going to be in it for short periods of time.
Rather, the vehicle is designed to be a sort of urban refuge.
A place that you can seek solace as you creep through stop-and-go traffic on your way home.
And the vehicle's designed around that.
From nose to tail, it's shorter than an Audi A3, but it's got a wheelbase that's about the same as the A4.
Which means that this thing is basically Cabin.
And when you're talking about headroom, we've got more vertical space here than in the Audi q3 SUV.
Now the vehicle itself is designed around autonomous driving.
So at the front we've got lights that communicate with passengers in the same at the rear in there 360 cameras all around that are sensing the environment.
During our demonstration today, those cameras are looking at these sort of boxy QR codes around the area to sense the environment but the actual vehicle won't need those.
The cabin itself is built around sort of like a three step paradigm.
At the bottom.
You've got this sort of natural area with these cloth seats.
Closed door panels, lots of places to put your phone and whatnot when you get in the car.
Just above that there's the sort of tech layer, which is where you'll find a large wraparound OLED display with three dimensional graphics and you're going to interact with that with a combination of eye tracking and touch sensitive panels on the doors here Just above you now we've got this sort of big open area cabin and that's gonna really make this spacious vehicle feel more spacious.
We've got open-pore wood along the top, and along the vehicle you'll also find real plants that are gonna help purify the air alongside the actual on-board air purifiers.
One of the coolest things about this vehicle is because it's designed to basically creep through stop and go traffic, it is level four autonomous.
There's a steering wheel that pops out here when you wanna steer it yourself.
But when you go into autonomous mode it retracts into the dashboard giving us this sort of table like we've got here.
And there are magnets built into these tables.
We saw at the Shanghai show that you can do things like Put cuffs on here and they'll hold into place while you're driving.
You don't have to worry about them.
Jocelyn loose.
And while you're creeping through stop and go traffic, maybe you don't want to just look at the road around you.
And that's why there's VR technology built in.
We got a demonstration of that earlier as well.
And it's really interesting the way that they use the motion of the vehicle to work with the VR in the virtual reality headset to reduce motion sickness.
What I'm seeing is a mountain range that I'm flying above, and I'm moving through it and there is an animated dragon flying in front of me.
And as the car turns, my field of view turns as well.
And as we move forward, we move forward through the virtual reality and I think that is Probably going to help a little bit with the motion sickness that I thought you might get with virtual reality because what's happening outside of the vehicle is being reflected inside of VR.
But it's a lot nicer looking in here than the rooftop parking lot that the car is actually driving through right now.
Now there are no plans to actually build a vehicle like this just yet.
But of the four Audi AI concepts that they've already debuted, this one looks the most production ready.
Be sure to check out the rest of our coverage of CES 2020 for even more cool electric vehicles and autonomous rides like this.
You're not gonna wanna miss a thing.
