Audi VR integrates digital tech into automotive retail

Audi is taking the next big step in integrating digital technologies into automotive retail. The Audi VR (Virtual Reality) experience gives customers the opportunity to configure their preferred car at the dealership through virtual reality headsets and experience it in an unprecedentedly realistic way. The headset showcases the carmaker’s entire model portfolio, including all possible equipment combinations. With this, Audi has become the first automotive manufacturer to develop a dedicated retail software solution for virtual reality headsets.

Luca de Meo, member of the Board of Management for sales and marketing at Audi AG, presented the Audi VR experience this week on the sidelines of the North American International Auto Show in Detroit: “Hand in hand with our dealers, we are bringing digital innovations into the dealership in order to improve convenience and to provide even better advice.”

With the innovative technology, customers and prospective buyers experience the virtual Audi world on a new level – in three dimensions, with all sound effects, and almost life‑like. They can virtually take a seat behind the wheel of their individually configured dream car or take a look in the trunk. A camera tracks the movements of the user’s head and the system adapts the image displayed accordingly. The full spectrum of the Audi model range, with respective customization options, can be called up: colours, leathers, inlays as well as infotainment systems. The dealer is thus able to demonstrate the diversity of the Audi portfolio in a very convenient way and to provide individual advice to the visitor. 

Audi will bring the new sales tool to first dealers by the end of this year – with particular focus on dynamic growth markets where high sales increase for Audi AG is being accompanied by expansion of the dealer capacity. In future, it will also be possible to provide the Audi VR experience away from the dealership as a mobile solution – while visiting the customer at home, for example.

Thanks to their large field of view and the performant positional and movement tracking, Virtual Reality headsets offer excellent immersion – the observer feels fully integrated into the scene presented. In use at the Audi dealer, VR headsets obtain the extremely detailed data records for the vehicle models from a high‑performance computer that assures superior image reproduction.

The Audi VR experience is also equipped with high-end headphones by Bang & Olufsen. They transmit the full range of acoustic information, from the sound of the doors closing to the 14‑channel sound of the Advanced Sound System in the Audi A8 and the conversation with the customer consultant.

Audi AG has already been pioneering the use of virtual reality in automotive sales since 2012, blending digital innovation with the strengths and services of the physical dealership: Audi City, the cyberstore with a real presence, displays the brand’s automobiles on ceiling‑height digital powerwalls on a very life‑like 1:1 scale. There, visitors are able to configure their individual car step by step.