We all know that idling at red lights wastes fuel, and Audi claims to have a solution that could reduce city fuel consumption and reduce annual CO2 emissions by 15 percent.
The company’s Travolution demonstration system allows vehicles and traffic signals to communicate via Wi-Fi and 3G cellular signals. A clever algorithm determines the optimal vehicle speed to allow the car to hit as many green lights in a row as possible. The speed is displayed in the instrument cluster, as seen above. The car’s adaptive cruise control can be set to automatically adhere to the target speed, or drivers can simply follow the number themselves.
If a vehicle is approaching a traffic signal that’s about to turn red, the system will sound an alert chime or display a warning inside the car. While stopped at a red light, the car’s dashboard will display the amount of time remaining until the light turns green, which could help drivers decide whether it’s worth cutting the engine to save fuel. Or it can tell them how much time they have to apply makeup and send text messages.
Audi has fitted the system to 15 test vehicles and 25 traffic signals in Ingolstadt, allowing engineers to test the algorithm in real-world traffic. Initial tests reportedly show the technology could reduce annual CO2 emissions by 2.2 million tons if applied throughout Germany.