A6Andrew

Hi:

I'm in the market for a used A6, 2012 or 2013, 3.0, Premium Plus or Prestige with Nav. Prefer CPO.

1. These cars have a 3g hot spot. Is there any way to upgrade this to a 4G hot spot right away or in the future?
   
2. Some one recommended Side Assist. What is that? (Sorry, I'm a newbe to the A6)
   
3. Can I email maps and directions to my Nav system from my laptop?

Any additional recommendations for must have features?

I'm in the San Francisco, Bay Area and am willing to drive up to 2 hours for the right car.

Past machines:
Infiniti G35x, 2004, 2004-2014
Audi S4, 2000, 2000 to 2004
Audi A4 98, '1997-2000
Alfa Romeo, 1973, GTV, 1985-1997

snagitseven

Welcome to the AudiWorld Forums! There is a wealth of info via the discussions that can be revealed by either browsing or using the search feature. You can search within a specific forum or all forums and chances are, you'll discover your questions have already been addressed. In the meantime:

1. Not currently. So far, Audi has announced that next year they will introduce LTE to the A3 model. It's not known if there would be an upgrade path in the future or what it would cost for other models. Audi is behind the curve on this one.

2. Side Assist is a blind spot warning system. Lights located in the side mirrors will Indicate if another car is located in those zones. Not to be confused with Active Lane Assist which attempts to keep the car in the lane and warns if the car drifts outside lane markings by vibrating the steering wheel.

3. Via a free onlne "myAudi" account, one can send destination locations to the car from the website directly or using the "Send To Map" feature in Google Maps. Currently, routes can only be created within the car's nav system.

SmokingTires

Audi Side Assist adds power folding mirrors, which otherwise would not be available on 2012 Premium Plus, for example.

dicktahoe

A feature of my A6 I really, really like is "Adaptive Cruise Control". If you use cruise control a lot this feature makes it so much nicer and easier, because it slows to the speed of the car in front of you, or back up to the maximum speed you've set.

A6Andrew

Thank you for the reply. This is very disappointing though. With all the noise made about the electronics on the a6, 2012 and beyond, I would have thought things like 1 & 3 would be solved. I mean who needs 3g when my phone is a 4g hot spot? And I'm leery of spending much $$ on nav only to find my ipad is much better out of the gate.

Do you know if Audi is simply behind the curve on all this? Or has no car company solved the problem of integrating one's iPad (or Android) or the ability to use iPad/android apps into their systems? Android should be easy to do.

Thoughts?
Andrew

JRomulus

Andrew, I hear you and many of us have had those thoughts. On the other hand, it's clear that whether you are selling smartphones, pc's or cars, free upgrades to the latest tech isn't going to be at the top of the manufacturer's list.

Their job is to sell more of this/next year's model, not help people stay in last year's....

That said, there are always ways to improve or augment OEM products, and we're all waiting for someone to develop a way to upgrade 3G to 4G (or 5G down the road) via some hack or add-on.

snagitseven

While the MMI/Audi Connect may not have 4G, it's still a very slick system to use. The screen and maps are very good and interfaces nicely with online and internal searches, Google Earth and the input options with the selector, touch pad and voice command have been highly reviewed. The four years of free Sirius traffic merged into the maps is a bonus. I also find that 3G for MMI functions is adequate - 4G would be nice but not essential if you have a few extra seconds of patience. (Only the wifi hotspot feature can be annoyingly slow).

As to device integration, Bluetooth Audio allows for most any music streaming app to work fine with song info and MMI control, i.e, Pandora, MOG and others when first selected on the phone. The AMI cable will play any music or video file an iPhone can hold. While Siri cannot be activated form the MMI, when activated on an iPhone/iPad, the audio plays through the audio systems speakers. SD cards and the internal Jukebox HD add versatility to the source choices. Bluetooth tel is easy to set up and interfaces well from the phone's contacts via voice control or the MMI control selector. Finally, for better or worse, you also get HD radio and Sirius audio.

No car brand has yet made the "perfect" entertainment/nav system but IMO, the Audi MMI w/Audi Connect comes as close as anyone and better than most. Nits aside, when coupling the system with all of the other benefits of owning a modern, highly engineered Audi and you get one heckuva performance luxury automobile.