Oh, modern world, how you change us. Audi has developed a new technology that tells you how fast you need to go to make the next green light, which theoretically makes it possible to coast from green light to green light and never get stuck with a red light again.
Of course, that would be in a perfect world without traffic and speed limits. But if you’re cruising at 29 mph, and your Audi tells you that you need to go 34 mph to make the next light, it’s an easy call.
The system is basically your Audi connecting with the city’s traffic light system via wireless Internet. After all, if your smartphone can constantly be connected to your email, Facebook and the NASDAQ, why should your car be any less functional? The city computer tells your car how soon you have before the light turns red, and your car tells you how fast to go.
As you might imagine, it wouldn’t take much more to make your Audi completely self-driving so that you simply input your destination, and the car does the driving. But we’re not there yet.
The system—which really needs a cool name…LightDrive, maybe?—can even do the calculation when you’re sitting at a red light. It will look ahead to the next intersection and give you a timed countdown to make it, just like a video game. Thus you’ll know whether being aggressive can let you make it, or if reaching it is out of the question, so you can relax and not stress as much.
In addition to reducing stress and being a more informed way to drive, the environmental impact of fewer cars waiting at red lights means should mean less gas burned and fewer pollutants emitted.
Audi estimates that implementing LightDrive—we’re just going to call it that—would reduce emissions by 15 percent across the board. For a single technology, that is massive. Furthermore, Audi estimated that in Germany alone this would save 238 million gallons of gasoline annually. Globally, that could be huge.
The only thing preventing LightDrive from being implemented is governmental regulations. Assuming lawmakers get traffic laws updated in the near future, Audi says the system is completely ready to go. We don’t have any word on what’s being done to get lawmakers moving. Is sending caviar a bribe, or just tacky? We will consult Emily Post.