Audi shows Travolution eco-friendly traffic system

Most car makers are focusing their efforts solely on reducing the tailpipe emissions of their vehicle lineups through conventional methods such as more efficient engines, advanced catalysts and lighter cars. Attacking vehicle emissions from a different angle, Audi is adding a new traffic management system it has developed with several partners to its arsenal. Called Travolution, the system promises to improve traffic flow and thereby reduce time spent idling uselessly, improving emissions.
According to Dr. Fritz Busch, Professorial Chair for Traffic Technology at the Technical University of Munich, “The new approaches to modeling and optimization in the network-wide control of traffic lights, together with communication between traffic lights and intelligent cars, exploits a potential for improving traffic flows that has previously gone untapped.”

The project so far has been developed primarily in Ingolstadt, the carmaker’s home city, where it has already been employed across a network of 46 traffic lights. The Travolution system takes information on traffic flow and light cycles and integrates the data into a unified picture, then optimizes the operation of all the lights as a whole. This beats the piecemeal approach of standalone traffic lights, though Audi hasn’t revealed how much emissions and fuel consumption are reduced.

In conjunction with the traffic light operation, several intersections have been fitted with communications modules that can interact with two test vehicles Audi has made available, an A5 and an A6 Avant. These cars combine with the information transmitted from the intersections to compose what Audi calls ‘The informed driver.’ The data transmitted to the cars recommends the optimum speed for traveling between intersections without having to stop, thus minimizing unnecessary acceleration and deceleration - maneuvers which expend fuel.

Audi has plans to expand the project by 20 cars and another 50 traffic light installations. It will also provide up-to-the-minute traffic information across the city to keep drivers aware of snarls to be avoided. So far the project has taken two years of development and involved a total investment of about €1.2 million ($1.89 million).