Porsche (or Audi?) is on the road with a Porsche 911 with lidar sensors on it. The mysterious test car was spotted here in the Netherlands and raises a number of questions.
AutoWeek reader Bas de Glopper spotted a special Porsche 911 this week in a parking lot here in the Netherlands. The White elf is clearly a car with which test work is carried out. This is evident from the taped rear windows and the large lidar sensors on the roof, and otherwise the stickers that are on it make it clear. It states that research is being carried out with this car. The striking thing about those stickers is that they are from Audi.
The link on the stickers points to a page where Audi explains that people and license plates can be registered by the systems and points out the privacy rights associated with them. A passage in that text makes it even more clear that this concerns the testing of driver assistance systems and/or technology for autonomous driving: “Audi AG’s legitimate interest lies primarily in the development and validation of safety-related driving functions such as driver assistance systems and strong and fully automated driving.”
Then the question arises: what should Audi do with a Porsche 911 to test that technology? Well, we bet that this is simply a test car from Porsche itself. Audi is the R&D leader within the Volkswagen Group and is therefore also the brand under which the development of autonomous driving falls. Then, in the case of this 911, it can still be used for testing and ultimately use by Porsche. Audi is responsible for its legal aspect and therefore the stickers refer to Audi for any questions or complaints.
If the fork is indeed so in the stem, logically we see here preparatory work by Porsche for its own (semi-)autonomous car. The chance is only very small that it is specifically about the 911. After all, Porsche is reportedly leaving Audi’s Artemis project, because the fully autonomous driving on which Artemis largely focuses ‘wouldn’t fit with the philosophy of the brand’. An autonomous 911 would then be completely swearing in the church. Most likely, the test will focus on semi-autonomous driving for another future model. Porsche will be working on a new electric flagship separately from Artemis and you can count on it that a degree of autonomous driving will be possible with it.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl