UrbanSphere Rounds Out Audi’s Vision of Its Near Future

UrbanSphere Rounds Out Audi’s Vision of Its Near Future

Published: May 12, 2022 | By: American Luxury Staff

Last summer, the first of a trio of new concept vehicles emerged from Audi. The collection, a series of abstract representations designed to illustrate the automaker’s sensibilities regarding autonomous terrestrially based personal travel, launched last summer with a heavyweight roadster called the SkySphere. That first model in the series is a long, savagely angular and metallic creature that can be driven by human or AI and is intended to be a next-generation weekender.

The second vehicle in the ’Sphere series, the GrandSphere, slots as an executive-level daily driver, and appeared within weeks of the first. Like the SkySphere, the grand tourer carries the new Audi ideal of progressive luxury, a spectrum of on-board activities that emerge when the car’s pedals and steering wheel retract and the car’s wheelbase extends to become a mobile lounge space or office. But the third, the UrbanSphere, was another seven or eight months in coming.

Audi formally announced the model recently, the last concept in the series. The UrbanSphere is, as its name suggests, a solution for urban travel in an autonomous grid, and as optimal as a fleet vehicle as it is as a privately owned conveyance. Like the others in the ’Sphere series, the UrbanSphere is large enough to double as a recreational space; it’s also packed with reclaimed, recycled or sustainable materials, and technologically tricked-out, with digital interfaces galore. And, like its brethren, its wheel and pedals vanish when the robot driver takes over.

Like the other models in the concept series, the UrbanSphere is a representative, and the ideas and technological advancements it contains — which include CARIAD-developed level 4 autonomy, MMI touchless response, and use of sustainable materials like Bamboo — will eventually be seen in one version or another in actual production models to come.

 

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