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Feann Torr22 Oct 2014
NEWS

Next-gen Audi A8 drives better than you

All-new Audi flagship's autonomous driving system to function "better than human beings"

The next-generation Audi A8 luxury limousine will set a new standard in safety for the German brand.

Due in 2017 the A8 will be Audi's autonomous motoring pioneer. And according to one Audi executive, it will drive better than most human beings.

Stefan Moser, Audi Head of Product and Technology Communications, said the upcoming A8 will be a fully autonomous, self-driving vehicle that doesn't get distracted, unlike human drivers.

"If we have a proper system it will always be better than human beings," he said. "They are not phoning, not looking at pretty girls, no distractions."

Moser said Audi "wants to be first" to market with a self-driving car, noting that its autonomous car technology already works well, and it was just a matter of waiting for the legislation to catch up with the technology.

In Germany, for instance, cars are legally only allowed to drive themselves for short periods of time, around 10 seconds, and that's why most active lane-departure systems cut out after a short period. But that's set to change, in step with some US states.

Audi made history last week when an empty RS 7 sports car lapped the Hockenheim race track at full tilt, as the company ratcheted up its autonomous car program. But that was on a perfectly sunny day, on a racetrack, with no other traffic or pedestrians around. Will autonomous cars work in all weather conditions? Moser said a combination of cameras, radars and lasers will be its 'eyes', working in all conditions.

"The camera system is not able to always do everything. We have also lasers, we will have more sensors too. With a laser you can see in fog, for instance," he said.

"It must work everywhere," he stated.

The Audi executive said the new A8's exterior design will be previewed this year by the A9 concept car at the 2014 Los Angeles motor show in mid-November. The final production version of the A8 will then be shown in 2016 ahead of its global release in 2017 he said.

We previously reported it would be expensive technology for motorists to own, but Moser explained it would be "not too much higher in price for the autonomous [A8 cars]".

And will the autonomous A8 be offered in Australia, to be seen cruising around affluent areas of Oz? If the legislation allows it, most definitely.

"We build cars for around the world," said the Audi technology chief, noting that in future the software and probably the hardware would be standardised, reducing the cost, and car-to-car communication would further improve the effectiveness of self-driving cars.

"In the beginning it's not easy to find a solution for many manufacturers. Everybody wants to be first. But eventually you have to talk together."

In theory autonomous cars will reduce crashes, traffic congestion and CO2 emissions, but one of the biggest fears shared by many motorists is what happens when the systems malfunction.

Moser says Audi's setup has redundancy systems, a second control unit, in case the primary system dies, and noted that the error rate with the technology so far was "zero". Currently no computer systems in existence have a true zero error rate.

Indeed, the advent of autonomous cars will cause a headache not only for legislators but also insurance companies, particularly if/when they become involved in collisions.

"At the end of the day yes of course, it will be bad publicity when they crash, but we have to make them as good as we can," said Moser, who said the technology would change the automotive landscape forever and concurred that Volvo's goal of building fatality-free cars by 2020 was achievable.

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