audi

The 2008 Audi A8 L W12 rests in a premier echelon of cars that combines extreme luxury with exceptional driving performance; these cars make it difficult to decide whether you'd rather be reclining in the back seat while a chauffeur drives, or up there where the action is, with your hands on the wheel. The back seats tempt with a DVD-entertainment system, power adjustment, and a refrigerator. The driver's seat offers control over the 6-liter 12-cylinder engine and superb all-wheel-drive handling for such a large car. All seats get treated to stellar sound from the Bang & Olufsen … Read more

One of the prettiest coupes around, the 2008 Audi A5 comes in with excellent handling, thanks to the standard Quattro all-wheel-drive system. Its 3.2-liter engine produces adequate power, but you'll have to step up to the Audi S5 for real fun. Our test car came with a smooth-shifting six-speed manual transmission in lieu of the available six-speed automatic.

We also had all the goodies in the cabin, including an excellent sounding Bang & Olufsen audio system and the Audi Music Interface, which let us connect a crazy variety of music devices to the car. We're also very … Read more

If some researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Singapore-based Gambit Game Lab have anything to say about it, gamers with serious vision problems won't have to take a backseat to their 20/20 friends anymore.

On Tuesday, the lab unveiled AudiOdyssey, a game for the Nintendo Wii that is based solely around sound and tasks players with mimicking a DJ trying to create a catchy beat that people can dance to.

The idea is that players--those with or without vision problems--can use the Wii's motion-sensitive controllers to get a rhythm going and then build more complex … Read more

While some concept cars look as if they come from a future that never will be, others represent cars that will actually go into production. We've gathered the most realistic concept cars from the last auto show season to see how the near future will look.

Click here for photos of concept cars that could or will enter production.

Audi is joining other German automakers in the effort to eliminate exhaust emissions, promising to bring an electric model to market in the next 10 years.

Rupert Stadler, Audi's chairman and chief executive, said in an interview with German weekly Welt am Sonntag published Sunday that he expects battery technology to dominate in the coming five to 10 years.

"By then we will offer cars without exhaust emissions," Reuters quoted Stadler as saying. "Electric cars offer great opportunities, which we have already seized on."

Reducing vehicle emissions is a chief concern for automakers in Germany. … Read more

Following the sport versions of Audi's larger cars, such as the S4, S5, and S8, the diminutive TT gets its own sports version, the TTS. Audi announced today that the 2009 TTS would launch in late 2008. We got a preview of this car at the 2008 Detroit auto show, and came away baffled by its engine specs. We were highly impressed by the 2008 Audi TT Coupe and Convertible, when equipped with the 3.2-liter V-6 and Quattro all-wheel-drive, but Audi specified a 2-liter turbocharged four cylinder for the TTS. Stats published with Audi's announcement today clear … Read more

On the second day of the 2008 Western Automotive Journalists Media Days, we drove a variety of different cars at Laguna Seca. This famous track employs a number of technical turns, not to mention a quarter-mile straightaway, for testing handling and acceleration.

Click here for photos of production cars tested on the track at Laguna Seca.

You'd never hear us complaining about our job here at CNET Car Tech, but there are times during the course of our reviews that we find ourselves wishing we could drive our test cars a bit more, well, illegally (all in the interests of thorough automotive journalism, you understand). Yesterday, our prayers were answered at an event hosted by the Western Automotive Journalist association at Laguna Seca raceway in California. One of the first things we sought to find out was whether Audi's Quattro system worked as well on the track as it had on the roads. We … Read more

In his latest prizefight, Brian Cooley looks at two high-stepping German cars, the Porsche 911 Carrera 4S and the Audi R8. Both cars have all-wheel-drive and both top $100,000 in price, but which is better? Brian compares powertrains, handling, design, cabin electronics, and a special category for cars in this segment.