Meet Jack, The Audi A7 That Drives Itself

Audi is providing members of the public with a taste of what’s to come with demonstration drives on board an Audi A7 piloted driving concept vehicle, nicknamed ‘Jack’.

Customer trips in ‘Jack’ start in the myAudi Sphere at Munich airport and goes via the Autobahn A9 – part of the Audi’s “Digital Motorway Test Bed”. The journey takes circa 60 mins with normal traffic flow, with an Audi expert always on board.

After the journey participants are asked for their opinion, with their impressions incorporated into the development of future automated driving functions. Opportunities to ride in “Jack” start today and run through to August with potential test drivers targeted via various communications channels, including social media sites run by Audi Germany. 

Audi has already used the A7 piloted driving concept test vehicle on three continents since 2015.

On the A9 it can drive at speeds up to 130 km/h. It accelerates, brakes and changes lane predictively and smoothly while cooperating with other road users.

Audi intends to highlight the development of the central driver assistance controller – ‘zFAS’ uses signals from all the sensors to continuously generate a detailed image of the car’s surroundings.

The ‘zFAS’ module, roughly the size of a laptop is fitted for the first time as standard on the recently launched Audi A8, was developed for highly automated driving as per SAE Level 3.