Audi Cars Can Now Interact With Traffic Lights

German automaker Audi will introduce Traffic Light Information technology in its cars this month. It allows the cars to interact with nearby traffic lights and notifies drivers of when the light is about to turn green. Although this feature will work only in Las Vegas now, the automaker has plans to expand it to other US cities in the coming months as the traffic signals are upgraded there.

Audi models like the A4, A4 Allroad, and the Q7 built after June 1, 2016, will have this feature. However, the customers need to have a subscription to Audi's streaming service. The driver will get a message in the instrument cluster or heads-up display regarding how long it would take for the traffic light to turn green. The cars will receive the real-time signal information from the advanced traffic management system that monitors traffic lights through an onboard 4G LTE data connection.

Audi says that in future, it might integrate the information from advanced traffic management systems into its other features like vehicle start/stop and navigation, which would help to optimise the routes and give speed recommendations so that the driver can hit more green traffic lights. These services would also help to improve efficiency and manage traffic.  

The credit for this interactive feature goes to the implementation of Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) system in Las Vegas. V2I allows vehicles to interact with its surrounding infrastructure and Audi is the first automaker to put this V2I technology into public use. It will take a lot of time to implement these kinds of features in India as the whole ecosystem has to be modified.