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Audi wants to keep you healthy while behind the wheel

Health tracking is all the rage. You can get smart watches and smart wristbands and all sorts of silly tech to give you intricate metrics about your wellbeing. Hell, my bathroom scale is connected and will automagically sync my latest weight, body fat, and heart rate readings to an app on my smartphone. Bathroom scales and wearables aside, Audi is hoping to bring this fitness-tracking tech to four wheels with its new Fit Driver system. No surprise, the new program was announced at the technophile's paradise that is the Consumer Electronics Show. Paired with a wearable, like an Apple Watch or FitBit, that would monitor heart rate and skin temperature, the car's sensors can track a driver's breathing and driving style. This data can be analyzed alongside weather and traffic information, effectively allowing the car to determine how stressed or tired a driver is. Systems within the vehicle would then be tweaked to "relax, vitalize, or even protect the driver." This can take the form of an automatic massage and adjustments to the cabin temperature, ambient lighting, and infotainment. So when you're about to go full road rage because there's a Camry doing ten under in the left lane, Sirius could flip on the easy listening of Watercolors to calm you down. Naturally, this technology is still in the early stages, and there's no word about when it could actually arrive in production vehicles. But as driverless systems evolve, Audi is aiming to develop such an advanced health suite that an autonomous vehicle could detect a medical emergency, pull over safely, and call for assistance. Here's to the future, folks. Check out the official release below. Audi Fit Driver Audi envisions a future in which drivers leave their cars more relaxed than when they entered them. The car, as a personal yet simultaneously connected space, is ideal for health and fitness monitoring. Under the motto "my Audi cares for me", Audi Fit Driver will become a supportive driving companio. The Audi Fit Driver project focuses on the well-being and health of the driver. A wearable (fitness wristband or smartwatch) monitors important vital parameters such as heart rate and skin temperature. Vehicle sensors supplement this data with information on driving style, breathing rate and relevant environmental data such as weather or traffic conditions. The current state of the driver, such as elevated stress or fatigue, is deduced from the collected data.

Audi SQ7 coming, will have electric turbo

Formula 1 and endurance racing are already harvesting energy from turbos on the track, and now it's apparently time for a similar idea of boosting the efficiency of forced induction to hit the streets in a high-performance, diesel SUV.
In a recent interview with the UK's Autocar, Audi technical boss Dr. Ulrich Hackenberg let the big news slip. "The new Q7 will be available in the market next year but the electric turbo will come a bit later in the Audi SQ7 available in 2016," he said. The e-turbo system was already rumored for the premium SUV but for the standard model, not this just-announced performance version.
Audi has been experimenting with the e-turbo system for a little while, as an electrically driven supercharger. It showed up on the RS5 TDI concept that used a 3.0-liter, twin-turbocharged diesel V6 plus the electric system to diminish turbo lag. In that application, it provided an impressive 385 horsepower and 553 pound-feet of torque and an alleged sprint to 62 miles per hour in 4 seconds. Although, Dr. Hackenberg didn't make it clear if this was the exact layout for the SQ7.

Audi following Tesla with 280-mile EV family car

The press days are finished at the LA Auto Show, but things said there are still making news. While in California, Audi technical development chief Ulrich Hackenberg told reporters that his employer plans to release an electric car with a range of 280 miles "around 2017." Hackenberg wouldn't say what kind of car - or crossover, perhaps - it will be, but one report said it would be "a large car, fitting five large people with ample luggage space." Most observers expect it to be a sedan to take on the Tesla Model S. It's no secret that Audi respects Tesla, and there have been hints that The House of Quattro is ready to really flex its progress-through-technology muscles in Tesla's direction. Audi will be applying lessons learned in the development of the coming R8 E-tron to the future electric car, after it managed to double the range of the electric sports car thanks to new battery technology to 450 kilometers, or 281 miles. This puts another tentative all-electric Audi in the mix and another Tesla competitor, after rumors of a possible electric Q8 from February of this year. If an electric Q8 does happen, it's expected to be a challenger to the Tesla Model X. And that might not be all: Bloomberg reported in June that Audi had "devised blueprints for several high-performance electric saloons and sport-utility vehicles." News Source: AutoExpress Audi Technology Electric audi e-tron