The new Audi A8 made its world debut at the Audi Summit in Barcelona on July 11 as the premium carmaker’s flagship model and the future of luxury class.
In its fourth generation, the Audi A8 embodies the benchmark for Vorsprung durch Technik, with a contemporary new design, innovative touchscreen operating concept, and a systematically electrified drive. It is also the first production automobile in the world to have been developed for highly automated driving. From 2018, Audi will gradually be taking piloted driving functions, such as parking pilot, garage pilot, and traffic jam pilot, into production.
The A8 signals the dawning of a new design era for the entire brand. The front end with the wide, upright single frame grille and the fluid, muscular body symbolise a sporty elegance and sophisticated status. Muscular shapes above the wheel arches give visual expression to the quattro drive.
Audi carries its high quality standards into the digital age with a radically new operating concept. At its centre is a 10.1-inch touchscreen display which, when off, blends almost invisibly into the high-gloss black surround thanks to its black-panel look. The user interface appears as soon as the car is opened and a second touchscreen display on the centre tunnel console allows access to the air conditioning and comfort functions as well as making text inputs.
Automated driving functions include the Audi AI traffic jam pilot, which takes charge of driving in slow-moving traffic at up to 60km/h on motorways where a physical barrier separates the two carriageways. The traffic jam pilot manages starting, accelerating, steering, and braking. The driver no longer needs to monitor the car permanently. As soon as the system reaches its limits, it calls on the driver to take back control of the task of driving.
Once activated, the revolutionary traffic jam pilot, a central driver assistance controller (zFAS ), permanently computes an image of the surroundings by merging the sensor data. As well as the radar sensors, a front camera and the ultrasonic sensors, Audi is the first car manufacturer to also use a laser scanner.
The Audi AI remote parking pilot and the Audi AI remote garage pilot autonomously steer the A8 into and out of a parking space or a garage, while the manoeuvre is monitored by the driver, either inside or outside the car. They start the appropriate system from their smartphone using the new myAudi app. To monitor the parking manoeuvre, they hold the Audi AI button pressed to watch a live display from the car’s 360° cameras on their device.
The new Audi A8 will launch in the Irish market with two extensively re-engineered V6 turbo engines: a 3.0 TDI and a 3.0 TFSI.
For more information contact one of the dedicated sales team at Michael Moore Audi on (090 ) 6403900.
