Wheelings & Dealings: Audi Revs Up Connected Vehicles with RacoWireless Partnership

Audi and AT&T (News - Alert) captured headlines last month at the Consumer Electronics Show with a new LTE-based connected car effort. This week, RacoWireless announced it is also among the partners working to bring these solutions to market.

Specifically, the effort involves providing 4G connected car capabilities as part of the introduction of the 2015 Audi A3 sedan, which will be available starting this spring. According to the partners, this vehicle will be the first with LTE (News - Alert) functionality, and Audi plans to introduce 4G-related features in addition vehicles in the future. Connected car features of the A3 will include access to real-time information, and voice navigation, and Wi-Fi connectivity for up to eight devices.

For this effort, RacoWireless, an existing partner of Audi of America, will provide complete connectivity management, including 24/7/365 call center support, and will work with AT&T to deliver an immersive in-car infotainment system.

Image via Shutterstock

As TMC (News - Alert) Group Editorial Director Erik Linask wrote in the Quarter 1, 2014 issue of M2M Evolution magazine, Audi garnered a lot of attention at CES (News - Alert) this year thanks to help from NVIDIA and Qualcomm. 

“NVIDIA does the graphics for the AV system in the car and the images are wonderful,” Linask wrote. “It is like having a high-end tablet in the dash, and you really appreciate it in the car. NVIDIA (News - Alert) was showcasing a future technology that I expect Audi to pick up which virtualizes the dash in such realism that you can’t tell the metal isn’t metal and the wood isn’t wood, it is rendered. 

“This means at some future point you’ll be able to select between a dash that looks like it came out of a classic car, a car of the future, or, for me, a steam punk car just by changing a setting,” Linask continued. “Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”