xradman

Well if they would allow BT tethering, it doesn't matter. All you would need is for your smartphone to be LTE capable.

hashluck

Sepang Blue

mikesm559

So I went back to both the Audi booth and the a7 on display at the nvidia booth. The engineers all left yesterday, so only a few development types from their research labs in California to talk to.

Some info:

1 the mix system is a different system than the Mmi plus in our a7's today. So the radio and the CPU are not swappable. The mmx system will be Vailable on the a3 first, and then go elsewhere in the line.

2 the nvidia booth car is a production euro 2012 a7. It had a (a) button under the parking break lever. This is the auto parking brake system, which sets and releases the parking break automatically. This is not in my us a7. Also, the nab system was showing 4g, and the control panel said it was talking to tmobile. This must be the hspa+ network, but apparently this mode is not supported on the us version of the car.

3 the volume reset at start/stop was supposedly configurable, but the engineer couldn't find the setting. He agreed that this behavior seems to be out of character with the cars systems and would look into it.

4 the street view software was very cool. It's in the production a7s and should be in new cars being built now.

5 the developer couldn't find a way to tell what the software rev level in the car was, so I couldn't see what was current. He did say hat OTA upgrades we difficult for the Mmi system because he firmware for the whole car is in one package, and is about 4gb in size, so until the packaging changes, only dealers will be able to upgrade systems.

6 they have a bunch of other stuff ncoudng remote control of various car features and settings via smartphone apps, but apparently some idiot hacked nto a MB control app and triggered the parking brake when someone was driving it, so the German government is investigating everyone's Internet access systems for security and it's chilling new feature releases.

I have a couple pics and more details, but have to catch a flight s will post this weekend.

mikesm559

Ps the production euro version of the car had 4 cameras in it! When in park assist mode, you could select various views and combination views. Very very cool!

jfourman

Thank you for helping all of us A7'ers look into our future. The German internet MB car hack is a bummer. It is unclear from your post whether or not the remote control features would be available to current A7 users. Did you get a sense for that?

mikesm559

They didn't know, but they did seem to indicate a lot if software work was going on during the year of a buld and so features would be being released through the production cycle which implied upgrades would be common.

In other booths like ford and mb, their (new) systems were going to be constantly upgraded. So at least for some features, upgrades should be available.

TIME89

Great post. Thanks for follow up.
Sad, because for every upgrade customer will pay $$$$
Owners of Q5 just find out, that update their outdated navigation system will cost them $300+

mikesm559

So here are a couple pics I got that were interesting.

The first is a pic showing the extra (A) button below the parking brake. In the Audi booth, the ERL guys didn't know what it did (!), but the designer in the nvidia tent did - automatic parking brake. It gets set and disengaged automatically. Another item on US cars.

The 2nd pic shows the streetview feature. Very cool. Note the 4G indicator on the data connection display. The European version of the cellular radio does HSPA+ in the US AWS band, so the car can get access to the T-mo 42 Mbps service.

The numbers in the bottom left are memory usage, as the car's MMI was in engineering mode (I wonder if there is a way of turning that on - I should have asked!).

The rear seat was also very nice, much nicer than the US version, because of the middle seat. The left and right were not quite as nice, but they seemed comfortable.

Noone seemed to have any explanation for why US cars didn't have as many features or options other than the regulatory process here for approval, etc... is more complicated and they worry about litigation.

I am trying to remember all the stuff people said, but it was great to talk to them, and many of the audi folks loved talking to an owner.