Audi Working on New... Touchpad

Having embraced the infotainment world so quickly, established automotive manufacturers now find themselves in the awkward position of having to work on more than cars to make their products successful.

Imagine an Audi without the MMI system, or any car without the LCD display... Not a pleasant sight, is it? Carmakers know it and this is why more and more of them are working themselves of infotainment technologies.

The Germans from Audi announced this week that it is time for a change in the way the MMI touch looks, feels and works. This is why, within a year, a new generation of the technology is to be released.

Today's pad works like a separate operating panel on the center tunnel console. This is one of the main things the manufacturer will change: it will reposition the pad into the MMI terminal – as the surface of the rotary push button, allowing for a better integration of the MMI system into smaller cars. Audi will also reduce the number of surrounding hard and softkeys.

Even if this second generation of the MMI hasn't arrived yet, Audi engineers are already working on the third one, which promises to be slightly larger, integrating all MMI functions and eliminating the rotary push button and the surrounding keys.

As exciting as the above announcement might be, it does not even come close to the promise Audi made this week: the availability of the MMI system in more and more of its cars, “as a standard feature of future vehicle generations.”