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The Audi A8: First Production Car To Achieve Level 3 Autonomy (ieee.org)

schwit1 shares a report from IEEE Spectrum: The 2018 Audi A8, just unveiled in Barcelona, counts as the world's first production car to offer Level 3 autonomy. Level 3 means the driver needn't supervise things at all, so long as the car stays within guidelines. Here that involves driving no faster than 60 kilometers per hour (37 mph), which is why Audi calls the feature AI Traffic Jam Pilot. Go ahead, Audi's saying, read your newspaper or just zone out while traffic creeps along. To be sure, the A8 also monitors the driver, even while the traffic jam persists, and continues to do so as the speed edges up over the limit. If the driver falls asleep, it'll wake him up; if it can't get his attention, it will stop the car. If you want to buy the new A8, you'll have to check whether your jurisdiction will accept it as a Level 3 car. Audi said in a statement that it will follow "a step-by-step approach" to introducing the traffic jam pilot. It plans to sell the base model in Europe this fall for 90,600 euros, or about $103,000, and to enter the United States market shortly afterwards. A model having a longer wheelbase will cost a few percent more.

3 of 375 comments (clear)

  1. Re: European cars...... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Let's see...

    America: corvette and the NFL, also won WW2
    Europe: gay ass smart cars and soccer, also got ass reamed by hitler til the US stepped in

  2. Re: I look forward to by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    Cyclists can kiss my ass. If you want respect, start following the rules. Yes, stop signs apply to you too. Yes, you're required to signal before changing lanes or turning. No, you don't get to squeeze to the front of the line at stop lights. No, you don't get to use the pedestrian crossings.

  3. Re: European cars...... by ArmoredDragon · · Score: -1, Troll

    The idea the US "won the war" though is patently absurd.

    Correct, but the US was absolutely critical to that war. You could have removed any one allied country in that effort EXCEPT the US to have victory. USSR would be a distant second, but they were poor as fuck and really had no chance without the US hitting Germany hard from the west. This is also entirely ignoring the pacific theater.

    But let's look after the war: Very few countries in Europe were either not fascist or not gobbled up by the USSR immediately after the war, and Europe's infrastructure was almost completely destroyed (In fact, the last fascist regime, Spain, ended in 1975.) If the US hadn't implemented the Marshall Plan, what countries didn't end up ultimately joining the Warsaw Pact would have remained fascist.

    Quite simply, the US rebuilt Europe, and served as Europe's only hope as a bulwark against the USSR, who was doing its damnedest to expand westward and force more countries into communism (Think I'm lying? Go read about the Berlin Airlift.) Then after that threat finally ended, little shits like you come back here and say that we didn't do anything at all and that the "red scare" was really never actually threat, much like holocaust deniers.