AUDI urban future initiative: vision of mobility at CES 2014

at CES 2014 in las vegas, AUDI proudly presented the team’s efforts to leverage technology to make their vehicles safer, more efficient, and more exciting than ever before. highlights this year were connectivity, matrix LED lighting technology, piloted driving and parking and other rapidly evolving innovations which are redefining mobility.

the AUDI urban future initiative is bringing together two worlds: the car and the city. by means of an interactive exhibit in the form of a futuristic city model, the AUDI urban future initiative highlights the needs of commuters in large cities and how they move through the city. how many minutes does someone spend being stuck in a hold-up today? how long will it take to find a parking space? the interactive urban model gives a vision of mobility and provides an outlook on how technologies can contribute to efficient and comfortable travel from A to B.

AUDI urban future interactive exhibit at CES 2014
image courtesy AUDI urban future initiative (also main image)

the facts behind come from the city dossier boston, a research project by AUDI and the architecture office höweler + yoon, winners of the AUDI urban future award 2012. more than 330,000 people commute daily to work in the city center of boston. the population of boston increases during the day by 41 percent – a huge challenge for its transportation systems.

CES 2014 – AUDI urban future interactive exhibit (top view)

the results can be applied to other large cities, too. specifically, the team of the initiative analyzed bottlenecks in the traffic network and derived visionary solutions from its findings. the interactive model simulates mobility solutions for three types of commuter – visitors to CES could experience how technologies can give the road warrior, the straphanger and the reverse commuter access to smoothly operating mobility in the future.

AUDI urban future interactive exhibit simulates mobility solutions for three types of commuter
image courtesy AUDI urban future initiative

the road warrior lives in a suburb and commutes by car to a workplace in the city center. on arrival, the time-consuming search for a parking space begins. the CES exhibit demonstrates, for example, the added value of piloted parking for this type of commuter: the car is left in front of a parking garage and the driver starts the process of parking using a smartphone. while the road warrior is already walking the last yards to the office, the car parks itself autonomously – at a minimum distance to the other vehicles, as the driver’s door can now remain closed. equally, a safety margin in the distance to other parked cars is also superfluous. the city, too, benefits from this technology, as the efficient handling of parking places creates free space that can be greened, for example.

image © designboom

the straphanger also lives outside the city and commutes into the center. for the journey, straphangers use several means of transport, which are scheduled in minute detail: first they go by car to a park & ride area, where they change to public transportation. the last part of the route is covered on foot. the interfaces between these different steps have to interconnect seamlessly. for this kind of commuter, maximum comfort is the decisive element. today already, AUDI drivers can see bus and train connections in the surrounding area on a display via AUDI connect. 

the reverse commuter lives in the city center and travels to work outside – against the flow and usually without hold-ups. in the evening, close to home in the inner city, things get difficult. tired out by traffic lights and rush-hour traffic, reverse commuters begin their daily search for somewhere to park in the evening. the car manufacturer AUDI is working on, for example, ways of taking the strain off the driver in stressful situations like this: piloted driving in city traffic would allow the automobile to navigate the streets on its own. this is an exciting prospect, and only one of many taken from the CES exhibit. thanks to films and visualizations, visitors to CES could see how future technologies such as those from AUDI’s preliminary development projects can have a sustained influence on urban mobility. 

CES 2014 – AUDI urban future interactive exhibit – augmented reality
image courtesy AUDI urban future initiative

‘across the globe, cities are growing extremely rapidly. our technologies can make a contribution to meeting the requirements of mobility in megacities. AUDI connect, car-to-x, piloted parking and piloted driving are just a few of the forward-looking solutions where we are pressing ahead with the networking of the automobile and the city. I am convinced that in future even more than today, the car will enter into an intelligent relationship with the city,’ says rupert stadler, chairman of the executive board of AUDI AG.

CES 2014 – AUDI urban future interactive exhibit – augmented reality
image courtesy AUDI urban future initiative

chairman of the executive board rupert stadler announces the first participants in the AUDI urban future award 2014

the AUDI urban future award promotes a dialog with experts and researchers in the fields of urban planning, architecture and urbanism, and provides new impulses for the debate about mobility in cities of the future. from 16 december 2013 to 5 january 2014, interested persons could vote online to choose the US team for the AUDI urban future award 2014. the question posed by the competition for the award was: how far can data serve as planning tools for urban mobility? on the evening before the international CES, professor rupert stadler announced the winners philip parsons, urban planner and founder of sasaki strategies, and federico parolotto, mobility expert and principal of mobility in chain and their proposals. thus the first of four contributions to the AUDI urban future award 2014 has now been established.

philip parsons & federico parolotto: new online marketplace for mobility

philip parsons & federico parolotto imagine a comprehensive digital mobility marketplace for cities, a system that harmoniously coordinates individual traffic with public transport. the users can then freely and transparently choose the best means of transport. see more info and the speed pitch video by philip parsons and federico parolotto.

sketch road warrior
image courtesy AUDI urban future initiative

the interactive model simulates mobility solutions for three types of commuter that are visualized in these sketches: the road warrior, the straphanger and the reverse commuter access to smoothly operating mobility in the future.

sketch straphanger
image courtesy AUDI urban future initiative

sketch reverse commuter
image courtesy AUDI urban future initiative

about the AUDI urban future award
the AUDI urban future award is held every two years, in 2014 for the third time. the competition began in 2010 with visionary proposals for urban mobility. the award 2012 showed mobility scenarios in five metropolitan regions worldwide. with the aim of making the initiative even more specific, the award 2014 turns its attention to feasibility studies in the framework of existing urban planning projects. in october 2014 AUDI will present the AUDI urban future award and prize money of 100,000 euros for the best proposals. 

another ‘highlight’ for the audience of the AUDI keynote at CES 2014 was the dance performance with laser show.

video stills of the dance performance of the AUDI keynote at CES 2014
image © designboom

instead of having the trunk entirely filled with computer technology, all the new technology should be incorporated in the car using minimum space. so the challenge is to synchronize the product development process – both for automotive and electronics. AUDI engineers and NVIDIA are partnering, placing a ‘big engineering challenge’ to something a little bit smaller than an iPad. the first prototype of the AUDI zFAS with tegra VCM (visual computing module) was presented at the CES 2014.

AUDI zFAS prototype with NVIDIA tegra VCM (visual computing module)
image © designboom

at this year’s CES the main focuses of AUDI were connectivity, matrix LED lighting technology, piloted driving and parking and other rapidly evolving innovations, redefining mobility.