When it comes to automobiles, my taste has always been embarrassingly mundane. The “car guy” in my household is my Corvette-driving wife Marie. (I’m content as long as a vehicle gets me, my passengers and our belongings from point A to point B with reasonable comfort and safety.) And so it never even occurred to me to lust after anything manufactured by Audi, a carmaker that most definitely caters to people who love to drive.
That changed last year when I took a tour of the Silicon Valley research lab of Audi’s parent company, Volkswagen. My eyes lit up when our guide showed us a slick, Internet-connected navigation system based on Google Earth. The A7, a new Audi that has arrived early for the 2012 model year, sports that system as an option; so will the 2012 A6, A8 and Q7 as well as other models. Last weekend, I borrowed an A7 from Audi and cruised around Northern California checking out the navigation that had left me agog in the lab, among other features.
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The A7 is a sporty, roomy hatchback — a “sportback” in Audi parlance — that starts at $59,250, or $62,870 with Google Earth and the other information-and-entertainment features I tried. It’s packed with the sort of stuff that gets motorheads’ pulses pounding: a 310-horsepower supercharged V6 engine, an eight-speed Tiptronic transmission, Quattro all-wheel drive and an interior that’s resplendent in leather, brushed aluminum and copious amounts of real wood. I largely ignored all this and focused on the digital-age gadgetry, which is also copious: navigation, phone connectivity, SD slots, 3G data, wi-fi and more.
All of these features are built into a new version of MMI (Multi Media Interface), Audi’s infotainment system. When you start the engine, a 7-in. screen slides out of the dashboard and swivels into place; the car uses it for everything from the navigation and entertainment features to climate controls to external cameras that help you back up and parallel park. A smaller display is nestled between the tachometer and odometer. There’s no touchscreen input, but I didn’t miss it much — my fingertips quickly trained themselves to use the MMI’s knobs, buttons and steering-wheel-mounted controls.
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The MMI’s voice input, however, proved challenging. Sometimes it understood me perfectly. In other instances, it confidently did something other than what I’d just requested, or simply said “Pardon?” in its robotic female voice. I was much happier avoiding it and relying on other methods of input, of which there are several. You can enter alphanumeric information by twisting and pushing an oversize knob, a process that reminded me of using the Dymo embossing labelmakers of my 1970s youth. Even better: a touch pad lets you draw characters one by one with your finger. I swiftly entered destination names this way with nary a typo, even though I’m a southpaw and was using my right hand.
The thing that got me excited by the Google-powered navigation when I saw it in Volkswagen’s lab was the satellite imagery, a far cry from the blocky graphics of my 2004 Mazda 3’s nav system. Behind the wheel, however, I quickly concluded that all that realism wasn’t helpful. What I needed most were minimalist maps I could interpret at a glance, an option the MMI also provides. Besides, photographic maps in a car navigation system seem redundant. When I drove the A7 up the California coast from Monterey to San Francisco, Google Earth was splendiferous — but nowhere near as eye popping as the real-world version all around me.
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As with every GPS setup I’ve ever used, the one in the A7 was occasionally a puzzlement: every time I let it guide me home, it got me within two blocks of my house, then had me hang a superfluous right and do a U-turn. Overall, though, it’s the best in-car navigation I’ve tried. The spoken, turn-by-turn directions are crisp and well timed, and the screen behind the steering wheel provides a just-the-facts representation of the road that’s more useful than the more elaborate one on the larger display. The navigation system not only warns you about traffic jams but is smart enough to adjust its directions on the fly to avoid them. And icons indicate the amenities available at highway exits, such as brand-name gas stations and roadside eateries. (Marie correctly deduced that the tiny apple indicated an Applebee’s in the vicinity; I’d wondered if it represented a farmer’s market or an Apple Store.)
The car’s other tech features include somewhat fancier, more polished versions of ones I used when I test-drove a 2012 Ford Focus equipped with Ford’s Sync system. Once you’ve paired your phone with the MMI over Bluetooth, you can make hands-free calls and stream music from the phone. If you’ve got an iPhone or iPod, you can plug it into a port under the armrest, then navigate albums, artists and playlists with the MMI controls. Twin SD slots let you do the same with music stored on memory cards, and you can copy tracks to a built-in 20-GB “jukebox.” Luddites get both a CD player in the dashboard and a six-disc changer in the glove compartment, plus Sirius satellite radio.
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Did I just say there’s a CD player in the dash? Actually, it’s a DVD player. For obvious reasons, you can’t watch movies while the car is in motion. You can, however, listen to the audio. And you can watch on the MMI display whenever the vehicle is stopped, even if it’s just for a moment. I’d find that distracting, and it seems like an odd capability in a car that otherwise errs on the side of safety. (When you back out of a parking space, it mutes whatever you’re listening to until you’re back in forward drive and on your way.)
I did test the DVD option with a Looney Tunes DVD, though: when I got stuck in stop-and-go traffic, I had the slightly surreal experience of briefly seeing Foghorn Leghorn each time I tapped the brake.
The A7 I tested includes Audi Connect, a built-in T-Mobile 3G connection that it uses for the navigation system as well as other features like a rather rudimentary news browser. (When I tried it, all I got were terse stories from the Agence France-Presse wire and items about Audi itself.) The coolest thing about Audi Connect is that the A7 doesn’t hog it — it also uses it to provide wireless Internet to everyone in the car. Like a giant MiFi hot spot, it lets up to eight wi-fi-enabled devices get online at once. That’s no big whoop if you happen to be driving, but it’s a boon to spouses with laptops or iPads and kids with gaming handhelds or iPod Touches. Audi Connect is free for the first six months, then $30 a month, with discounts for long-term plans.
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I’m encouraged by the A7’s arrival, even though it’s unlikely I’ll ever own one. Some of the features it offers are relegated to high-end vehicles now, but they’re going to be everywhere, and they’re going to change how we think about automobiles. As they do, mere gadget freaks like me will at long last get to think of ourselves as car guys. I can’t wait.
McCracken blogs about personal technology at Technologizer, which he founded in 2008 after nearly two decades as a tech journalist; on Twitter, he’s @harrymccracken. His column, also called Technologizer, appears every Thursday on TIME.com.
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