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Control your Audi with your Apple TV, if you want to

Not to dash your hopes right up top, but this isn't a way to remotely drive an R8 from the comfort of your living room, or even summon it from the garage. Also, you'll need the new fourth-generation Apple TV (and a real TV hooked up to it) as well as a 2017 A4 or Q7. What Audi is offering is basically a version of the Audi MMI connect app distilled for the streaming media box. Things you can do include locking and unlocking the car, setting it to heat up or cool down before you hop in, and viewing the status of the car. (No screenshot was available from Audi, so you're looking at the iPhone version of the app up top. Just imagine it larger and more horizontal.) Who's it for? People who have the latest Apple TV, a new Audi, and would rather control the latter with the former on a big screen than a smartphone. In other words, we're not sure. We do wager that there's a decent amount of overlap between Audi drivers and tech early adopters, so someone will get excited by this. And since the new Apple TV is based on iOS, it probably wasn't too tough to port the iPhone version of the app over. Like a lot of what we're seeing at CES this week, this is likely a small step in the direction of increasing connectivity between all of the digital stuff in our lives and our cars. We'll get more excited when the family flatscreen turns into a live window of what your car is looking at. But also terrified.

2014 Audi R8 GT zooming toward Le Mans reveal

According to a report from Autocar in the UK, the Audi R8 is set to get something of a swan song for its own going-away party in the form of an updated GT model for the 2014 model year. If Autocar is right, this even higher-performance Audi R8 will debut at the upcoming 24 Hours of Le Mans race in France.
The 2014 Audi R8 GT Plus will reportedly get a tuned version of the much-loved 5.2-liter V10 engine that Audi has used to good effect in past R8 models. A six-speed manual or seven-speed dual-clutch automatic would send power to the rear wheels, enabling a 3.4-second 0-62 mile per hour run and a top speed of 199 mph.
Judging from spy shots that we've already seen (reprised above), the new GT Plus will be fitted with an aggressive body kit that includes a massive rear wing, a more prominent front splitter and enlarged side blade ducts. A Spyder version of the GT Plus may be on tap for 2015. Pricing, obviously, is unknown, as is any potential launch date. In other words... stay tuned.

Audi scores first CA autonomous car permit

Audi apparently knows how to get to the front of a line when it comes to driverless vehicles. The German automaker had the honor of being the very first company to receive one of California's new autonomous vehicle driving permits. It was a perfect followup to it being among the earliest ones to get a similar permit in Nevada a few years ago.
Getting the California permit is a big deal for the automaker because the state is also home to Audi's Electronics Research Lab. Among its current projects, Audi is working on the human-machine interface to communicate whether the person or vehicle is actually controlling the driving. All of this hard work is building toward offering autonomous motoring in freeway conditions in the next five years, Audi claims.
Obviously, autonomous vehicles from companies like Google have been testing in California for a while, but the new permits are meant to safeguard public safety when testing the driverless cars in public. The new rules include things like always having a person able to take control and more stringent standards like registering each autonomous car and the eligible drivers with the state. Any models testing on public roads also have to carry at least $5 million in insurance in case of injury, death or property damage.