What's the news?
Audi will have a new small concept car for the Shanghai motor show, which incorporates artificial intelligence technology. Well, we assume it does, simply because the concept's name is AI:ME.
Actually, all Audi will thus far tell us about the car is that it: "Illustrates the vision of an automated driving compact car for the megacities of tomorrow."
From that, we can deduce that this will be a concept with a wheel and pedals that can retract away into the dashboard when not in use. 'Compact' probably means that it will be somewhere between the current A1 and A3 in size terms, and is it just us or does the rear styling of this concept have a tiny hint of the 1998 all-aluminium A2 supermini about it? That would be a nice touch, a small salute to one of Audi's most ground-breaking cars of all time.
The sketch of the interior shows a u-shaped steering wheel, with what appears to be a naturally-finished wooden console above it, and with more of the same wood adorning the door top and armrest panel. The instruments are, of course, all-digital, and seem to be housed in a low-but-wide screen display which stretches across the dashboard in the manner of Honda's Urban EV concept.
The front styling appears to have been more or less lifted from the striking AICON concept saloon, which was shown at the Frankfurt motor show in 2017, and which is also supposed to be a fully-autonomous, self-driving car.
The addition of such high tech aspirations in a concept car means that we wouldn't be holding our breath in anticipation of seeing a car like the AI:ME in Audi dealerships any time soon. Audi has recently spoken of showing concepts that are 10-15 years ahead of production, so you're going to have to wait around for a while for this one.