What are you used to seeing in car ads? The beautiful Pacific Coast Highway. Relieved parents driving minivans while their kids are safe, and entertained. The desert.

To this list,  Audi adds dystopia.

To the backdrop of a dilapidated ribbon of highway, a scrunched-up guardrail, and a broken-up bridge, an announcer intones over a Philip Glass-esque soundtrack: “The road is not exactly a place of intelligence.  Highway maintenance is underfunded, costing drivers $65 billion a year, and countless tires, which drivers never actually check, because they’re busy, checking email.

This is why we engineered a car that makes 2,000 decisions every second…”

The ad ran during the high-profile broadcast of the Emmy awards.