Audi A7 Sportback
Update Executive trips the light fantastic at night
THE tech on offer in modern high-end cars is fantastic, and our Audi A7 is full of advanced kit. Summer’s long daylight hours mean I haven’t spent all that much time with the headlights on, but when I’ve used them – or when they’ve been activated automatically for me – I’ve been incredibly impressed.
Our A7 Sportback is fitted with the £1,150 laser headlight option. Matrix LED lights are standard, so even with oncoming traffic the Audi will still hold full beam, blanking out different combinations of LEDS to create a dipped beam ‘box’ so as not to dazzle drivers.
Very clever, but the laser light function that comes into play above 37mph is even better. You can’t switch the lasers on manually; the car decides when to do it, and you’ll know by a little icon that appears on the dash. That and the fact it’s like someone has turned the sun back on.
They are so bright that the beams pierce the gloom and cast a glow far down the road. The enhanced visibility is impressive, bringing with it an improvement in safety, too.
In fact, there’s lots of elegant use of light on the A7. Our car also has the multi-coloured extended interior LED light pack, as part of the £1,895 Comfort and Sound Pack. This adds LED strips on the dash and transmission tunnel, as well as in the doors and on the roof to highlight the contours of the cabin. It looks cool at night. So does the rear light setup; you might have seen the adverts. It uses 292 individual LEDS that perform a sweeping dance on start-up and close down (the headlights do a similar animated scroll). It means it’s instantly recognisable on the road from dusk to dawn.