The urbanization of cities is increasing, and today 54 percent of the world’s population lives in cities. By 2025 this number will be around 70 percent. In bigger cities, this will put a lot more pressure on streets and traffic control. Traffic is already a nightmare in some cities, and without changes, it is going to get much worse.
At the same time, there is a change going on in the car industry. More and more people can live without their cars, or let’s say that the need for a car is not as big as it once was. People might still need cars sometimes but the cost of driving and the time it takes are making people re-think their priorities. Traffic jams, too few parking places and negative environmental pressures mean that the car is not a given to stay as our default transportation vehicle.
The car industry has been paying attention to this. So let us focus on Audi for a moment. The company invited members of the EU parliament and other politicians to Berlin to present a new vision of connected traffic.
Audi has an internal section called ”Audi Mobility” that has only one mission – to make the car attractive for coming generations. One of the pilot projects that is already up and running is called ”Audi Unite”. It is based on car sharing. The people in the project use one application to track the available cars. The application informs them of the vehicles’ status, such as which cars are free to use, how much gas they have left in the tank, a booking list and, of course, where the cars are parked right now.
Sweden has been certified as the first pilot country for the Audi project, which is aimed at the younger people. The system will be connected to the central system for coordinating traffic lights in a city. For example, the cars communicate their positions to traffic lights in the city, and then the system suggests the right speed so that you come to the traffic light when it’s green instead of red. This type of planning saves gas and, of course, lessens our environmental impact.
It works by sending information from the car to a cloud-based system that does the calculations and sends back the speed suggestion and coordinates back to the car. This system uses data from traffic lights that are around 500m from the car. If all cars would be connected in this way, red lights might not even be needed. Or maybe not. There will always be people that hit the gas to cross intersections, but the number of red lights would at least decrease.
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