Audi Expands Traffic Light Information system to 10 U.S. Cities

author: Eric Walz   

Many drivers have experienced the frustration of waiting at an intersection for the traffic light to turn green and when it finally does, the car in front of you remains stopped because the driver is  checking their cell phone or fumbling with the car's infotainment system. With so many distracted drivers on the road today, this happens all too frequently. Audi is working to address this problem.

Audi of America has announced the expansion of its  Traffic Light Information (TLI) to two more cities—Phoenix, Arizona and areas of Kansas City, Kansas. With the addition of the two cities, more than 2,250 intersections across U.S. can communicate with Audi vehicles. The technology is known as Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I).

The pilot was first launched in 2016. Audi, in collaboration with Traffic Technology Services, first debuted its Traffic Light Information system in Las Vegas. With the addition of Phoenix and Kansas City, 10 major U.S. cities now use the service.

Enabled cities include: Dallas and Houston, Palo Alto and Arcadia, California; Portland, Oregon and Denver, Las Vegas and Washington, D.C.

"Audi continues to be an industry leader in connectivity and mobility solutions," said Scott Keogh, president, Audi of America. "Not only do V2I technologies like Traffic Light Information help to reduce driver stress, they are also essential infrastructure developments as we continue toward an automated future."

Traffic Light Information is a Audi connect PRIME feature available on select 2017 and 2018 models, enables the car to communicate with the infrastructure in certain cities and metropolitan areas across the U.S.

How it Works

When a TLI equipped Audi models approaches a connected traffic light, it receives real-time signal information from the traffic management system that monitors traffic lights via an on-board 4G LTE data connection. When the light is red, the TLI feature will display the time remaining until the signal changes to green in the instrument cluster in front of the driver or in the head-up display (if equipped). This "time-to-green" information helps reduce anxiety by letting the driver know approximately how much time remains before the light changes.

For future iterations of V2I technology, Audi's TLI could include integration within the vehicle's start/stop function, Green Light Optimized Speed Advisory (GLOSA), optimized navigation routing, and other predictive services. All of these services are designed to help reduce congestion and enhance mobility on crowded roadways.

In addition to Audi's technology, in the future, smart traffic signals can reduce traffic woes in cities. By using AI and information from connected or autonomous cars to detect where there is a heavy concentration of vehicles, traffic signals can alter their pattern to ease congestion—making traffic flow in cities much more efficient.

Eric Walz

Originally hailing from New Jersey, Eric is a automotive & technology reporter covering the high-tech industry here in Silicon Valley. He has over 15 years of automotive experience and a bachelors degree in computer science. These skills, combined with technical writing and news reporting, allows him to fully understand and identify new and innovative technologies in the auto industry and beyond. He has worked at Uber on self-driving cars and as a technical writer, helping people to understand and work with technology.