Audi high beam goes hi-tech

Audi has eliminated the need to keep dipping headlights at night on models now coming to Australia.

High-beam assist - Audi

Audi has eliminated the need to keep dipping headlights at night on models now coming to Australia.

It involves hi-tech equipment casting shadows on other cars while you drive with high-beam permanently on.

As you drive down a highway, a combination of the car’s cameras and sensors track the positions of cars approaching you and cars at the sides or in front of you travelling in the same direction.

The information is processed by the car’s computer which directs the lighting system to cast shadows at the exact location of those cars. The shadows move as the cars move.

The drivers of those cars therefore are not dazzled by the high beam. It’s a little like what happens to the earth during a lunar eclipse.

But the rest of the road to your front and at the sides remains in high beam so the view is not impeded. It‘s a feature that many car and truck drivers who travel long highway stretches at night might welcome spreading to other vehicles.

The feature is made possible with multiple headlights on each side of the Audi A8, and the new Audi A4. The feature is called Matrix LED headlights. The A4 goes on sale in Australia next year.

Audi has fitted its Matrix LED headlight system in overseas models for some years, but now it is bringing it to Australia.

Lights can be set to automatically switch to high beam when a driver leaves a built up area.

Peter Strudwicke, product planner at Audi Australia, said the system could project eight fingers of light. “It shows a really bright light down the right-hand side of the road.”

He said an array of lights towards the bottom could precisely project a light beam so that a driver could see road markings in heavy fog.

The system includes turning lights that use information from the car’s navigation system. They align the lighting with the curvature of the road before the driver starts turning the steering wheel.

Other lights directly respond to steering wheel movements to assist drivers turning into a sharp corner, junction or driveway. Other lights called city lights can highlight people on footpaths when travelling at low speeds.

Audi, a majority Volkswagen Group subsidiary, also has announced a string of assistive driving technology available with the A4. They include cruise control and assistive cruise control, a pre sense city feature which scans the road for other cars and pedestrians in built up areas, and parking assist for both parallel and perpendicular spots.

The rear cross-traffic assist feature prevents a driver backing into traffic when they back out of a parking spot, there’s an exit warning when cars approach from behind when stepping out of the car, and a feature called turn assist, which stops drivers turning right into oncoming traffic. A traffic jam assistant can take over steering when travelling no faster than 65km/hr in areas of congestion. But by law the driver must remain in control.