Travel Assist surroundings display with Benny Leuchter

A warm spring morning, an on-site visit in Wolfsburg. Once again, Benjamin “Benny” Leuchter is the first to arrive. Today he guides his Golf R to the agreed meeting place a little bit early. Is this down to his profession? Leuchter is a racing driver. He grins: “Look, only half a tank to drive the 350 kilometres from my home town of Duisburg to here. Not bad for a car with 235 kW!” Leuchter is full of praise for his ‘company car’, particularly its sound and drive. Power and sound are what car fans really love about the top-of-the-range Golf. But that is by no means all.

See what the car “sees”

Professionally, Leuchter’s main job is to drive cars dynamically. Today, he is demonstrating how his Golf helps him drive – and how it visualises his capabilities. The most digital Golf of all time displays what is happening around the car in its Digital Cockpit Pro. With appealing graphics, it clearly visualises the information, with which the assistance systems are working, how far the digital eyes can see and what exactly it is that they see. “It gives me an in-depth understanding of the assistance systems. I am aware of what the car is observing,” said Leuchter.

Some of this is shown by the digital cockpit in the basic version of the new Golf. But the optional driving assistant Travel Assist and its plethora of functions are where things get really exciting. So, a piece of transparency that visualises the technology of the new Golf. This was what the developers at Volkswagen were aiming for. But not only that. For Daniel Basse, function developer of the Travel Assist surroundings model, the fascination with technology is equally important. “Our sensors for Travel Assist see so much of the environment – seeing it presented graphically in such detail fascinates me as an engineer and as a driver obsessed with technology.”

Reproducing the car’s surroundings during the journey

The new Golf has a separate view for this in the digital instrument panel. It does an even better job of displaying what is going on and how Travel Assist operates. When Travel Assist is activated, at the touch of a button on the steering wheel, it stays in lane, maintains the distance to the car in front, applies speed limits if desired, and modifies the speed to suit the road conditions, all within the limits of the system. The surroundings display also reproduces an image of the surroundings in real time and displays the following:

• Highlighting of the lane the car is in
• Position of the car in the lane
• Position of the surrounding vehicles
• Distances from the surrounding vehicles
• Marking of the configured distance
• Relative speed of surrounding vehicles
• Solid and dashed-line road markings
• Roadside structures, such as crash barriers or gravel/grass verges 
• Use of indicators or brake lights in the car
• Current and imminent speed limits and route information (e.g. bends)