LAMBORGHINI’S NEWEST TECH CONCEPT USES AI TO COACH YOU ON THE TRACK

Developed in partnership with Accenture, Telemetry X presents three technologies in one prototype system that uses high-speed 5G data.

If the height of the Covid pandemic taught us anything, it’s that we don’t always have to co-locate to get stuff done. Lamborghini is now taking that idea to an extreme application: the racetrack. Lamborghini calls it Telemetry X, and while it’s just a concept right now, the idea is built on fundamentally proven technology and developed in partnership with Accenture, which knows a thing or two about high-end network solutions.

Introduced by the marque at the 2024 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nev., earlier this month, Telemetry X is three technologies brought together as a prototype system presented in Lamborghini’s new 1,001 hp Revuelto. The first piece is called Remote Garage, which uses the car’s integrated 5G wireless connection to beam telemetry and high-definition video from the vehicle straight to a driver coach.

Today, your average track instructor is stuck sitting on the pit wall with a stopwatch. With Remote Garage, they could instead be in their pajamas on the other side of the planet. Interestingly, the telemetry doesn’t just cover the car but the driver as well. The second part of Telemetry X is called the Biometric Data System, which layers in details about the driver’s health, including heart rate and supposed stress level, providing another aspect to the potential training feedback.

All of that works in concert with the Digital Co-Pilot, a next-generation, artificially intelligent voice assistant that can provide real-time guidance to enhance your on-track performance, and is able to call you out if you’re too late on the brakes or slow through the apex. Think Alexa meets Mario Andretti, and you’re not far off.

We spoke with Rouven Mohr, Lamborghini’s chief technical officer, who said that the widespread availability of high-speed 5G data helped to make this concept feasible: “Due to the lower bandwidth and higher latency of a 4G network, the functionalities would be limited,” Mohr told us. “For example, with a 4G network, the video stream may not be available to maintain the real-time performances of the exchanged data.”

On the biometrics side, Mohr admits that the current set of data monitored about the driver is quite limited. For now, it’s just to “showcase the possibilities offered by this technology.” Mohr was also quick to point out that Lamborghini will not own or share any of a customer’s health-related data, and that it will purely be used to “understand how the driving behavior can potentially influence the driving dynamic.”

And when might we see something like this in production? Unfortunately, nothing is confirmed yet. “What is being presented here is a technological concept to showcase the direction we want to take to further enhance the fun drive of our super-sport cars by leveraging connectivity,” Mohr said. “The idea behind the concept is exploring the possibility of new technologies applied to the track usage of the car. We cannot confirm at this stage if and when this will be put into production.” We certainly hope it does, if only because this racetrack tech would bring a whole new meaning to connecting with Zoom.

Written by Tim Stevens