Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Cars
  3. News

What’s next for in-car entertainment? Audi believes it knows

Ronan Glon
By
Audi prototype CES

When they merge into the mainstream, autonomous cars will need to offer ways to keep the passenger formerly in charge of driving entertained. An in-flight entertainment-like interface doesn’t sound very appealing, so Audi has a much better idea. It wants to turn the cabin into a full-fledged entertainment space, and it will showcase its vision by unveiling two separate technologies at the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

Called Audi immersive in-car entertainment, the on-the-go movie theater wouldn’t have been possible a decade ago. It leverages the increasingly high level of connectivity in both cars and mobile devices to let the occupants watch their favorite movie or stream content from the internet. At CES, the technology will be packed into one of the brand’s luxury sedans.

Related Videos

How? We don’t know yet. We’ll need to wait until CES opens its doors to find out, but we’re expecting big (and cool) things. Audi calls this technology the next-generation drive-in movie theater; we hope it involves a modern version of the drive-in movie snack tray popular in the 1950s. It’s interesting to note that, because the car needs to be stopped for the feature to work, the immersive in-car entertainment doesn’t depend on future leaps in driverless car technology. It may be closer to production than we think.

Users enjoy the second part of Audi’s novel entertainment space while the car is moving. Again, details are few and far between because the firm wants to retain an element of surprise, but the brand refers to it as a new entertainment format that turns the journey into the destination.

This technology likely ties into the 25th-hour project that Audi has been working on for over a year. If autonomy in cars gives drivers more free time, what is the best way to spend it? The 25th-hour project aims to define the premium mobility of the future, and we speculate that what we’ll see in CES will give us at least part of the definition.

Audi will release additional details about the technologies it is bringing to CES in the coming weeks, and we’ll see them in person when the show opens its doors on January 8.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Watch Hyundai’s Ioniq 5 EV perform a crab walk
Hyundai's Ioniq 5 EV performing a crab walk.

Hyundai is making exciting progress with its e-Corner technology that lets a driver “crab walk” out of a tight spot. Other maneuvers such as zero turns, pivot turns, and diagonal driving are also possible.

Hyundai has been working on the technology for at least five years, and previously showed it off in purpose-built vehicles that aren’t on the market.

Read more
We now know the eye-watering price of Nvidia’s RTX 4090 gaming laptops
XMG Neo 16 gaming laptop over a green background.

Nvidia's upcoming mobile GPU range is on the way, and soon, laptops equipped with an RTX 4090 will be out in the wild. Unfortunately, they won't be cheap.

We've just spotted one such laptop, and the price is downright terrifying. If not for the portability factor of laptops, you might be better off just buying a desktop graphics card instead.

Read more
VinFast’s new electric cars will be available in the U.S. this year
VinFast VF6

As we move toward electric vehicles, all kinds of new car brands have been popping up -- giving the traditional automakers a run for their money. Over the past few years at CES, one of the more interesting of those has been VinFast -- a Vietnamese company that delivered its first cars in the U.S. in November. Now, the company is planning on more releases over the next year -- and at CES 2023, we learned more about what those cars will offer.

VinFast may not be very well known in the U.S., but it's actually one of the larger automakers in Vietnam. It certainly doesn't have the experience in manufacturing on the scale that it's hoping to in the U.S., but unlike many of the other electric carmakers, it is actually shipping cars -- not just building concepts. The VinFast VF8 crossover and VF9 SUV were announced earlier -- but little was known about the smaller VF6 and VF7 models, until now. Turns out, like their larger siblings, they're pretty compelling options.
VinFast VF6

Read more