Your Audi Will Now Tell You How Fast To Go To Avoid Red Lights

Red lights are one of life’s minor inconveniences, but Audi of America is launching a new system that tells drivers how to avoid them.

Called Green Light Optimized Speed Advisory (GLOSA), the system uses vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) technology to communicate with traffic signals. The system then determines the car’s location and the timing of the traffic light. It will then calculate the optimum speed to travel to get a green light.

Unsurprisingly, the system also incorporates the speed limit into the calculation. As a result, drivers shouldn’t expect notifications to speed to get a green light.

The system works on select 2017 and newer Audi models and is an expansion of company’s Traffic Light Information system which displays the time remaining before a red light turns green. This means GLOSA works at more than 4,700 intersections in major metropolitan areas such as Dallas, Denver, Gainesville, Houston, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York City, Orlando, Portland, San Francisco and Washington, D.C as well as the greater northern Virginia region.

The system requires an Audi connect PRIME subscription which costs $199 for 6 months or $499 for 18 months on the 2019 A6, A7, A8 and Q8. That’s not chump change, but Audi hinted future updates could leverage V2I technology to provide optimized navigation routing and better fuel economy thanks to integration with a vehicle’s engine start/stop system.

GLOSA is a pretty cool idea and Audi says it was created to help drivers catch a so-called “green wave” of continuous green lights. This should help to make commutes less stressful as the automaker noted the average American spends nearly 300 hours every year stuck at red lights. That’s 12.5 days or more than seven 40-hour work weeks.