Gadgetory

hey what's going on everybody I'm Noah from TechnoBuffalo and I'm here in downtown San Francisco as Wednesday afternoon turns to evening I'm at the Audi clout event for the new 8 8 2011 8 8 car ironically enough this is the car I got driven around June at CES when I was working for Nvidia but this is a separate deal the folks from clout contacted me full disclosure not being paid for this but I was invited by the folks from clout there's my full disclosure to check out the a8 going to go for a ride I think I even get to drive it which I didn't can do in Vegas so here's a look at the car the 2011 model this is the a8 not the a8 L which is the longer wheelbase model but the a8 but you don't want to hear from me I'm here with Paul from Audi social media who can tell us a little bit more about the vehicle before we get into it yes so this is the all new redesign a 8 its brand new for 2011 actually came out November of last year sales started rolling out and people are really enthused about the technology that's in the car some of what you'll see well know is driving you will get to drive now so we'll have a good time why don't we step in the car all right we're in the car I'm going to leave the light on my video camera off so you can get the full power up sequence experience here of the a8 so we're going to go ahead I think Paul's got the key we're going to yeah there are two ways to start the car one you can actually leave your key in your pocket just push the start/stop button right here or two if you have the key out already like I do you can put it in here put on the brake and the car will start up if you press it in for just a few seconds all right now I don't have the wide-angle lens so I don't know if you got the effect but the screen came up the wheel came down and then what you couldn't see you just got to take my word for this is that the lumbar part of the seat the driver's seat here kind of wrapped around me I'm not I'm not saying that's good or bad I'm just describing you what happened we've got the LED running lights up here I've been told that they can be dimmed or disabled if they prove distracting I can tell you from being in the backseat that the LED lights are pretty entertaining at least for a ride from the Vegas Convention Center to the airport that's for sure so is this a touchscreen this is not a touchscreen everything is done through this MMI interface okay so you roll through the settings you'll see here this is just radio radio selection but to go back you just hit back or menu to go to the full menu and this is actually pretty involved so I won't get into all the nitty-gritty details or say no we want to get a test drive going right that the car enthusiasts in our audience I'm sure familiar with the various generations of MMI even I being a not a supercar geek know a little bit about MMI and the you know awards and critiques and whatnot it's gotten but is this the version with the the touch the touch panel it is okay it is yeah and that's that's strictly in the navigation and if you have pre that's what the numbers are here for if you have presets for radio that you like you just push the buttons and they'll they'll go to your radio presets well I'll show you again just so comes up gotcha and then when you're in that mode it also functions as a because you you you that's you go to destination you have to select that you hit address let's see let's go to something interesting so Street will say in San Francisco and then if you look it'll show you that it's in the mode that you can write you can disable that too if you don't like it but you just and it picks up s T a that's pretty good because that barely looked like an au true right it almost seems like before and it picked it up gasps no very cool all right and then one thing I have to ask you because my previous experience in this car I was not in the driver's seat I remember actually the first time I got into this car I was trying to I was trying to adjust the the passenger seats to the people behind me in more room and the next day I knew the touchscreen lit up and something was moving in the seat there's a massage option in there there there is a massage opsin option and I'll actually use it right now so you can see what what now is talking about but when you when you push it this comes up and this allows you to set everything that you want to set so the massage option is right here and you hit wave and I'm feeling I'm feeling the pressure on my back right now right it's actually kind of nice and that's it and that's a passenger seat only no it's driving it's both it's both it's both driver and passenger oh very cool all right I'm gonna have to turn the camera off so we can drive this thing and you know I can try to massage optional all right sort of red light here downtown San Francisco I'm behind the wheel and you know first things first y'all should know that I am NOT a regular driver of a flagship motor races in hasta Dan no matter the make or mark as they say in the car magazines I like to read so you know take my opinion with a grain of salt but the a8 feels smaller than I thought it was going to feel when I first pulled out I was trying to adjust the mirrors and I managed to like flip them inwards and then you know the radar thing was telling me not to back up anymore you know it's kind of like when I used to review phones and I couldn't get the battery covers off similar feeling for me but driving the car I hit the pedal and the torque kick did and we kind of lurched out and then once I realized what I was dealing with it's it's smooth driving granted we're downtown there's gridlock you know we haven't been able to I you know carve up any canyon roads or anything but the car definitely feel smaller than I was fearing it would when I pulled out very smooth I mean the technology is all around you but I've been able to pretty much ignore it except when we're at a red light and I wrote my name on the trackpad just just to say I could you know visibility is pretty good I figured out how to get the moonroof happening which I'm pretty excited about and you know you can definitely feel there's a little bit of get up and go under the pedal but like I said I haven't had a chance to really you know open the thing up alright so the fun police called now I'm kidding I'm besides it's green police and the Audi commercials that's for a different car ah mama call daddy calls me wants the t-bird back so we're bringing the a8 back to the to the event here that's away from traffic litter which is good it gives me more time to talk little tour around I got one chance to floor it on an open street I got to floor it for about a second and a half and then had to hit the brakes but Paul was describing the aluminum space frame the car is light it's actually one of the lower or the lowest rated horsepower car in its class but because it's so light it kind of doesn't matter and you know the car moved when I asked it to move and like I said I'm no super driver guy but you know what it felt nice to drive it was smooth it was easy I felt like there's power there I'm hoping I win the prize they're giving away a weekend with this car and I'm hoping I win it so I can take this thing out for a weekend and see how it really feels you know out on the road there any rate the tech is very cool the nav you know there you go find places to eat if we want to all that kind of stuff and I here for for a big luxury car it even gets decent gas mileage but I'm not shilling for Audi so you can go find out more about that if you want to I'm just saying I got to drive the AAA I had fun I'm gonna go inside and see what my fellow clout influencers I think we're called with the all folks inside need so there you go from the clout out ei8 event I'm Noah from TechnoBuffalo much much more on all this stuff including that stuff I did at CES there's nvidia tech in these cars we can go find out about that over at TechnoBuffalo comm and special thanks to my new friend Tatiana who was nice enough to do a little filming from the backseat while we were driving Tatyana appreciate it thank you we'll see you later all right special meant special guests bonus feature here I ran into will Park editor-in-chief of into mobile a quality website in the quality man but for real he's much more of a car guy than I am so you know I were talking about the car afterwards and he was like oh you know it's cool and he showed me and I thought you know I'm not going to grill will on camera but what he thought of the car just to show well showed me with yeah like this door for example don't hold all the way it'll suck itself interesting it one more time slow light yeah it pulls us out there so have to catch on camera but a pretty cool its luxury technology there's a lot of state-of-the-art scar that are cool and what's yet what's the website again well into mobile comm there you go