Audi’s E-tron Quattro concept, originally paraded at 2015’s Frankfurt Motor Show, will definitely go into production in some form during 2018, and the fully-electric SUV will simply be called the E-tron, bypassing the brand’s typical letter, number approach to model names.
Quattro
This is according to Audi board member Dr Dietmar Voggenreite, who explained to Top Gear Magazine that: “There’s quite simple logic behind that. We had, in the middle of the 1980s, the Audi Quattro, and we also called it just ‘Quattro’. So we’re doing the same with the Audi E-tron, which is our first fully battery-powered car.”
Today, Quattro denotes any new Audi with all-wheel drive but the original Quattro high-performance saloon from the 1980s has a special place in the heart of petrolheads. Time will tell if the E-tron manages to secure a similarly significant place in the history of motoring and electric vehicles.
So far, E-tron has only been used for Audi’s plug-in hybrid models, namely the A3 and R8, so it raises concerns that Audi will just offer the one plug-in car, especially in light of disappointing sales of previous E-tron models.
Dr Voggenreite quashed that worry, saying: “For us, E-tron is always electrification, and in the beginning, we’ll see more plug-in hybrid cars. Later, we will see a bigger share of fully battery vehicle cars.”
He added that by 2025, Audi’s business model will evolve from “just selling cars to also providing more mobility services”.
We’ve only these shots of concept E-tron so far, but Dr Voggenreite revealed that the final production E-tron is “very close to the show car” and would be “really SUV-orientated”.
Power
Despite boasting an exterior design clearly influenced by the new Q8, the E-tron Concept is expected to be slightly smaller size-wise. The concept was super aerodynamic too with a drag coefficient of 0.25, while its 496bhp four-wheel-drive electric powertrain could get the car up to 62mph in 4.6 seconds and cover more than 310 miles before it needed charging.
Anyone yet to be won over by the viability of pure electric cars so far could finally be won over by the E-tron. We’ll see in 2018…
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