Audi To Launch In-Vehicle 5G With 2024 Models Using Verizon Network

In the same week that many connected vehicles with 3G modems are starting to lose those connections, Audi of America has announced plans for its future vehicles. Beginning with model year 2024, some Audi models will start shipping from the factory with Verizon 5G radios. 

Audi isn’t providing any specific details yet on which models will be the first to get 5G or exactly when they will go on sale, but given that it is expected to launch on 2024 models, the first will likely arrive by the end of 2023. However, Audi won’t be the first to market with 5G in vehicles. A number of OEMs in China are already equipping vehicles with the latest generation of wireless technology and the BMW iX will be making its way to American customers in the coming weeks and months similarly equipped. 

But for now, Audi is the first automaker to announce that it would use Verizon as its carrier and that it will use both millimeter wave (mmWave) and mid-band spectrum. Verizon markets its mmWave 5G as ultra wideband (UWB) and it does indeed offer some extremely high data rates, often more than 1 Gbps. However, mmWave has very poor propagation and generally only works within short distances (<200m) from the cell site and it’s only available in dense urban environments. 

That’s where lower bands like the new C-band spectrum that Verizon just recently started turning on will make a huge difference with much higher speeds than 4G LTE and one-tenth of the latency. That low latency will be a key differentiator from what the BMW iX will have. Audi is expected to be one of the first automakers to feature cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) communications capability in North America. 

C-V2X provides the capability for vehicles to communicate with roadside infrastructure, pedestrians, cyclists and each other. That communication can occur through either the cellular network or directly between nodes. For now, Audi isn’t announcing any specific C-V2X applications for its vehicles, but over the last several years it has participated in numerous pilot projects with chip provider Qualcomm. These have included tests of equipping roadside construction crews with C-V2X transponders

Audi isn’t saying exactly which C-V2X applications it will launch or even when they will launch which may not be when 5G launches. However, the technology is being rolled out in China already by a number of automakers. 

What Audi customers can expect from day one is an improved user experience thanks to the improved connectivity which will likely be integrated with various features in the vehicle such as mapping and digital assistants. New Audi vehicles will also start rolling out over-the-air update capabilities, although those will probably prioritize using wifi connections over 5G. 

“We’re invested in companies that are looking at VR as ways in which customer experience can change in the car, especially as passengers in the vehicle,” said Pom Molhatra, Audi North America senior director of connected services. “This might include varying, you know, headsets and you know, creating a different environment.” 

At CES in 2020, Audi demonstrated the automated AI:ME concept. During those demos, vehicle occupants wore VR headsets that could display a wide range of scenes. Motion within the VR video was tied to the motion of the vehicle as well as the passengers head motion. As the vehicle moved forward or turned, the scene moved with it, helping to minimize motion sickness. While all of this is likely still years away from production in automated vehicles, 5G does provide the potential to create similar types of experiences for passengers. 

The announcement of 5G coming to Audi vehicles just happens to coincide with the shutdown of older 3G networks, with that spectrum being repurposed for 5G. 

“If we had a wish list, we would probably want to have software upgradability all the time. But, you know, in features like connectivity where there’s a fair amount of hardware impact that needs to be considered, software defined radio is not yet a reality inside the industry for these applications yet,” added Malhotra. “There are other ways in which the architectures are being designed to be a little bit more easy to upgrade, whether it’s access, whether it’s the communications built into a single module, or splitting up the communication so there’s a component of it that is more customer controlled, and more one that’s more OEM controlled.”

The current 4G LTE networks probably won’t be shut down until the end of this decade and 5G will still be with us well beyond that. But at least Audi and other automakers are now taking those transitions into account for future generations of vehicles.