Audi's motto is 'Vorsprung durch Technik', or advancement trough technology and the German carmaker was always keen to adopt the latest tech for its four wheeled babies. This is especially true of the comapny's flagship A8 series, which was always packed with top technology. It was the first car to be built on an aluminium space frame and it always featured a number of geeky goodies hidden behind a bunch of acronyms.

We're not Carzilla or Top Gear, but the new Audi A8 will be the first model to feature a new sat-nav system powered by Nvidia's Tegra chipset and that's what we find interesting. The system will feature Google Earth images, as well as detailed 3D models of European cities. Audi claims the system's Nvidia 3D graphics processor will render entire maps topographically, shading tunnels and bridges.

Audi also plans to incorporate Google Street View in the system at a later point and it promises detailed 3D city models with plenty of travel information from Wikipedia and detailed weather reports.

The system will use GPRS/EDGE, but a UMTS module will be added in 2010. Audi claims the system's connectivity diminishes when traveling at over 125mph, or 200kph. Looking at anything other than the road at such speeds is probably not a good idea anyway.

More here.