Frankfurt 2017: Audi Aicon Autonomous Car Concept Debuts

We’d told you that Audi was all set to showcase an autonomous car at the 2017 Frankfurt Motor Show and well, it has. It’s called the Aicon concept and it’s one that requires no drivers. The Aicon concept is a level 5 autonomous vehicle and this means that it does everything on its own and everyone inside the car are mere passengers. It has space for 4 people in totality who can go about doing what this generation does best, either watch television or catch up with friends via social media and of course there are those, who would want to hold an official meeting on the go.

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It’s got space inside and that you can be certain of, because the overall length of the car is nearly 18 feet and the wheelbase of the car is several inches longer than even the company’s flagship car – the A8. The seats are designed to provide comfort with just enough bolstering to keep passengers in place during light cornering. Of course the seats swivel, so it’s easy to change the arrangement of the seating to make it face-to-face or for ingress/egress.

The Cabin of the Aicon Concept can seat 4 people

As we said, the Aicon Concept boasts of Level 5 autonomy, which means that the occupants have no ability to drive, and this is why there are touchscreens and controls spread out for easy reach. Using these controls you can change the seating position and the various screens – even the windshield itself – can be used for viewing anything from movies to video teleconferencing. This bodes well with the Frankfurt Motor Show's theme as well of 'Future Now'. 

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Audi calls this a ‘paradigm shift in the automotive landscape’ – the doing away with human intervention. The autonomy that the Aicon concept also gives us a glimpse into what to expect from autonomous cars and Audi has managed to make sure, it gets the basics right. Conventional headlights and lighting units are absent from both the front and rear of this car. Instead there are fully digital display surfaces comprising hundreds of triangular pixel segments. They are three-dimensional recreations of the Audi AI symbol. Grouped around the singleframe are large light fields, in which – as at the rear – more than 600 3D pixels are arranged in space. The large surfaces and high pixel count enable versatile graphics, animations and information visualizations in any color. The Audi Aicon is thus no longer bound to a daytime running lights look, but rather can adapt to the driving situation and even its passengers. 

The wheelbase of the Aicon Concept is longer than the A8

The Audi Aicon features opposed doors that open to the front and rear. There is no B-pillar. The interior appears to be particularly wide when the two individual front seats are slid all the way back. Passengers can slide them up to 500 mm back and forth between the forward and rear positions. The seats don’t slide on rails, but rather on a platform covered in high-pile carpet that can be moved longitudinally, and on which the passengers’ feet also rest. The platform height is variable, so that it can also be used as an ottoman for your legs. The individual seats can also be swiveled by up to 15 degrees.

The swivel doors help ease ingress/egress

The Aicon concept is driven by four electric motors on the rear axle which produce a total of 350 bhp and develops 550 Nm of peak torque. Each drives one wheel, enabling electronically controlled, variable quattro all-wheel drive. The Audi Aicon can travel between 700 and 800 kilometers on a single charge, and that’s also thanks to the lightweight construction of the car. Even charging has been reduced to a minimum.

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Thanks to a high-voltage system with 800 volts, the Aicon’s battery unit can be charged to 80 percent of capacity in less than 30 minutes. The car is also equipped with a unit of inductive, i.e. wireless, charging. The Aicon manages both without a driver. In an AI Zone, it can pull up to a charging station on its own and charge its battery without any human assistance. Besides this, Audi will showcase another concept at the 2017 Frankfurt Motor show, an e-tron with Level 4 autonomous technology and we can't wait to see it.