Ever start to change lanes after checking the mirrors, only to hear an angry horn blast of a car you swore wasn't there a moment ago? This kind of close encounter could be a thing of the past with the new Audi Q7 and its radar-based blind-spot detection. Combine the Side Assist feature with a first-rate cockpit controller, and you have one of the very best high-technology vehicles available today—with a design that won't be mistaken for anything else on the road.

The Side Assist blind-spot detection feature is cheap at $500, but the Q7 is a premium SUV, starting at $50,620 and stretching into the high sixties. The 350-hp engine's appetite for premium gasoline is prodigious, too. At 14 mpg city, 19 mpg highway, you're looking at $75 fill-ups every 350 miles, with fuel at $3 a gallon. Also, the third row of seats is unsuitable for anyone tall enough to be allowed on the rides at Six Flags. But that's about it for downsides. This SUV that looks like a tall, brawny station wagon is an awesome mix of technology and on-road and off-road abilities.

Other automakers have talked about bringing blind-spot detection to the United States, but Audi has lived up to its motto ("Never Follow") and is the first to embed a pair of 27-GHz radar transceivers in the back bumper. Active above 30 mph, Side Assist senses cars coming up on your left or right. When they come within the critical blind-spot area that you can't see in the mirrors, about a car length or two behind (alerts vary with speed), a column of yellow LEDs illuminate along the inside edge of the side mirrors. They're visible when you glance at the mirror, but they don't blind you by shining directly into your eyes. Flip the turn signal (you do signal before turns, right?), and the LEDs flash very noticeably.

Don't confuse this with lane departure warning (LDW), which was pioneered in the U.S. in Infiniti M sedans and FX SUVs. With LDW, a camera in the inside mirror watches the pavement markings and beeps if you veer across a solid or striped line without your turn signal on. Both technologies are valuable in their own ways. LDW prevents a drowsy driver from going off the highway or an inattentive driver from unintentionally veering into the adjacent lane while tuning the radio, dialing a cell phone, or making kissy faces into the mirror at the baby. Blind-spot detection prevents you from intentionally changing lanes at the wrong time.

Another feature that makes Audis such great technology cars is the use of the multimedia interface, or MMI. It's a cockpit controller like the BMW iDrive but with an important difference: An array of hard and soft buttons flanking the controller makes it fathomable to most, though not all, users. Want to go someplace? Press the hard button marked Nav ("hard" means the button has only one function). Want to dial your cell phone via the integrated Bluetooth interface and phone book? Press Phone.

For other MMI functions (AM/FM, CD, navigation info, settings, and setup), you press a hard button, and the 7-inch LCD shows appropriate information that you can fine-tune with the control wheel or with four soft buttons, whose functions link to choices in the four corners of the MMI display. It might sound complicated, but it's fairly intuitive. iDrive requires intense concentration over weeks and perhaps months for mastery, but MMI is more forgiving of the wide variety of drivers who've earned enough money to afford sixty large for a car.

Infiniti and Acura cars also have good cockpit controllers and LCD displays. Infiniti does a better job of integrating disparate information (navigation, climate control, audio) onto its display. The Acura controller works passably well (and it's linked to a great navigation system), but unlike BMW and Audi, Acura hasn't been able to appreciably reduce the number of buttons cluttering the center console. The new Mercedes S Class is much like Audis with surrounding buttons, but most serve two functions: Press once for the first function and twice for the second.

The Audi LCD is mounted high on the dash (good) and is hooded (also good), but sunlight still leaks in from side windows and washes out the display. On the Q7, I found the placement of the MMI controller uncomfortable: It was too far back and too close to the high center console, which serves as an armrest while scrolling. Were Audi to move its shifter to the steering column or dash and/or use steering-wheel paddle shifters for occasionally manual shifting, the controller might be more comfortable.

June production of the Q7 (arriving late summer) adds adaptive cruise control (ACC) and emergency braking. The Audi version of ACC, a $2,100 option, uses a 76.5-GHz radar transceiver to sweep the road, for 600 feet ahead, in a beam 16 degrees wide and maintain following distances of 1.3 to 2.0 seconds, about six to nine car lengths at 60 mph.

Most competing varieties of ACC won't slow the car below 20 mph; a chime sounds to effectively announce, "You're on your own." The Q7 ACC slows you to a stop and, if traffic starts moving within 3 seconds, re-accelerates. Mercedes-Benz has a similar all-the-way-to-zero feature on its new S-Class.

Active cruise control provides moderate braking, up to 13 feet per second, per second. (Gravity accelerates you at 32 feet per second, per second, or it did back when I took high-school physics.) In dangerous situations where the driver doesn't react, most commonly to a car braking hard in front, the Q7 provides two stages of warnings. First, an alarm sounds in the cockpit, and a red warning signal flashes in the instrument panel. If that's not sufficient, the car follows with a quick but intense stab on the brakes and energizes the brakes for maximum stopping the instant the driver returns from his reveries and hits the brakes. Unlike the Acura RL with its collision mitigation braking system (CMBS), the Q7 doesn't panic-brake for you.

I believe this form of ACC will benefit drivers in stop-and-go traffic, such as on big-city expressways at rush hour. And the imminent-collision warning will be a blessing for momentarily distracted drivers.

Audi's entertainment offerings are evolving. The car comes with a 12-speaker Bose audio system and a six-disc changer that plays CDs and MP3s. Sirius Satellite Radio is a costly $550 option, and Audi backed off recently from offering customers the choice of Sirius or XM. The company offered a boatload of reasons why it's hard to offer both, but I think technology advances make it possible to have both embedded or pluggable, at very little cost to Audi, Audi dealers, and Audi customers.

The Q7 lacks a line-in jack, one of the few new vehicles without one. But by year's end the Q7 will have a USB connector as an option. It lets you play music from USB keys, Windows Plays for Sure-compatible music players, and Apple iPods. Audi says the connector will play iTunes downloads as well as normal iPod MP3s. All will be visible on the MMI display and controllable from the dashboard or steering wheel.

Also coming at mid-year, Audi says, is backseat entertainment in the form of a freestanding DVD player that clips into a mount on the backs of the front seats. Yank it out, and it goes on the plane or into a hotel room. You buy one or two, depending on how many different DVD programs you want to watch in back.

The technology in Audi's suspension and drivetrain makes the Q7 comfortable cruising the highway at speeds your insurance agent shouldn't know about. Turn off the highway and shift the suspension height from Automatic to the more radical of the two off-road profiles (via the MMI, of course), and you've got almost 10 inches of ground clearance. That's if you have the Adaptive Air Suspension system, a $2,800 option, instead of standard steel springs (which have a bit less ground clearance). Air suspension also provides roll stabilization, meaning it keeps the car nearly level going through hard turns.

Most all-wheel-drive SUVs, such as the BMW X5 and Lexus RX330, are fine for negotiating snowy, hilly roads (the ski house) as well as snow-covered gravel roads (the condo). The Q7 can handle badly rutted roads with rocks in the middle, though not boulders. But vehicles that handle more extreme conditions, such as the Hummer, Jeep, and Land Rover, aren't going to be much fun for the 200 miles of interstate highway before you get to the last few miles of two-lane and off-road driving.

The V8-powered Q7 continues other thoughtful Audi technologies: standard Bluetooth; the color-LCD driver-information display, nestled between the tachometer and speedometer, that provides basic navigation directions, audio information, and phone menus; the scroll wheels on the steering wheel for audio volume and channel/track selection; and the 12-speaker Bose stereo system with a six-disc in-dash CD/MP3 changer. (The subwoofer is neatly packaged inside the space-saver spare tire.) And most Q7 models will get steerable Xenon headlights.

A rear-view camera combined with parking sonar shows what's behind you and where you'll go with the current steering-wheel angle, and even provides a view of the trailer hitch, if you've got one. In its press briefing, Audi talked about learning how to steer watching the LCD; most every other automaker with a backup camera and fears of liability suits tells you to look backward and just occasionally glance at the monitor for reassurance. Audi's telling it the way it is: that is, the way people will really use backup cameras.

German engineers incorporate cup-holders only grudgingly. Audi's were somewhat more accommodating than most and integrated 10, including door-pocket holders for 1.5-liter bottles.

Outside of the Q7's technology attributes, other aspects caught my eye. Though it looks like an ample, tall station wagon, at 200 inches long, 78 inches wide, and 5,423 to 5,467 pounds, the Q7 is pretty close to the size of the Cadillac Escalade on all but height. The Q7 tows 5,500 pounds, and a towing package ($550) raises that to 6,600 pounds.

On the inside, roominess decreases as you move back. The front seat is the most comfortable, and the middle row is OK but not outstanding. The third row is for two small kids only (Audi optimistically says it's for those under 5-foot-4). I measured about 5 inches between the front of the third-row seat and the back of the middle seats. You can slide the middle seats forward, but they don't have much legroom to loan out. If you carry three rows of passengers, you'll be left with just 12 cubic feet of luggage space. The ideal configuration is to fold the third row flat, in which case you'll get 42 cubic feet of cargo space.

Panorama sunroofs (two of them) put sky over your head in all three rows, have a mesh fabric cover that filters sunlight, and add $1,800 to the sticker. You can also swap the second-row split bench for a pair of buckets and a console, for $1,200.

While the driver instrumentation is well laid out, the bright silver trim around the outer dashboard vents reflects into the massive side mirrors, the power door-lock buttons seem backward because you push the top half to lock and push down to unlock, the MMI controller zooms backward (it zooms counterclockwise from city to street), and the glove-box release button is located next to the MMI LCD, not on the glove box.

Audi's market is clearly delineated: people who want great comfort on- and off-road in something more technologically advanced than your garden-variety SUV. It could also include people who have sloping, snow-covered driveways, but that's overkill.

If you buy the base Q7 4.2 model at $50,620, including shipping, you've got to add on so many technology options that you're almost at the price of the Q7 4.2 Premium ($60,620). To that, we'd add Side Assist ($500) and Adaptive Air Suspension ($2,600), and satellite radio ($550) for a total tariff of $63,170. If you're carrying mostly adults, swap in the second row buckets (no charge on this model) and rear side airbags ($350).

As of June, a V6 version of the Q7 comes available with a downgraded list of features, such as a single-disc CD player, four fewer speakers, and optional Bluetooth. While the price isn't set, I estimate you'd pay about $5,000 less than an otherwise comparably equipped V8 Q7. Mileage might pass 20 mpg on the highway, but it won't match the V8's zero-to-60 time of 7.0 seconds.

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Price: $50,620 to $67,620.
Audi's new station wagon-like SUV is first to market with blind-spot detection, an important safety advance. It's capable of serious off-road driving as well as comfortable highway cruising. The Q7 seats four comfortably (capacity is seven). The powerful V8 passes everything except gas pumps.

Blind-spot detection is affordable. Industry's best cockpit controller (MMI). Serious off-road capability. Promising USB audio (and iPod) adapter due in fall of 2006. Standard Bluetooth.

Fair to poor fuel economy. Vestigial third-row seating, despite 200-inch length. No XM Satellite Radio option anymore (Sirius is available).