FRANKFURT MOTOR SHOW: Audi e-tron quattro concept

The waters continue to rise on Tesla’s exclusive spot on top of the electric vehicle mountain and, if the Audi e-tron quattro concept is any guide, they will soon be lapping at its feet.

This four-seat concept SUV, which will be the star of Audi’s stand at this week's Frankfurt motor show, is a pure battery-electric car that can deliver more than 500km of driving between charges, despite offering up to 370kW of power.

The 800Nm concept usually has 320kW available, but has an over boost function that delivers another 50kW for hard acceleration, like when it’s being punched to 100km/h in just 4.6 seconds.

Its top speed has been governed at 210km/h, with Audi insisting it’s a precursor to a practical, luxury, guilt-free, environmentally-friendly performance SUV it will bring to market in 2018.

“Audi will present an all-electric, luxury-class sports SUV in early 2018,” Audi’s board member for technical development, Prof Dr Ulrich Hackenberg said.

“Like the concept here, it combines driving pleasure with great range, an expressive design and excellent comfort.”

The e-tron quattro concept debuts Audi’s new electric powertrain concept of using three electric motors and a new-generation of intelligent drive management to make them work together.

Dr Hackenberg said the driver would determine the car’s rate of energy recuperation under braking by using either Drive or Sport on the gear lever, or working between the Drive Select modes.

The car will break with mainstream Audi tradition to be predominantly rear-wheel drive, via the two rear-mounted electric motors, under firm or hard acceleration. It will still use its front-mounted electric motor to drive the car at low speeds and light acceleration.

Instead of a traditional differential, it uses a Torque Control Manager to govern the urge coming from the two rear-mounted motors. This unit distributes the drive between the rear wheels and delivers torque vectoring for improved dynamic abilities.

Its fuel tank will be an enormous 95kWh lithium-ion battery, mounted beneath the cabin’s floor, and Audi claims it will deliver more range than any other electric car on the market. It’s also modular, and will be able to fit into other Audi body styles.

It can be charged with either direct or alternating current and Audi says it can be replenished from a 150kW charging column in less than an hour. The German car-maker says it can punch in 400km worth of range in just half an hour.

It’s also pre-equipped for induction charging and self-pilots into parking garages, taking advantage of its all-wheel steering, to ensure the charging plate is under the right spot for the most efficient charging speed.

The three electric motors are liquid-cooled -- and so are the power electronics that govern them. Besides delivering the power to the axles, they are also responsible for most of the car’s braking, at least up to mid-level stopping needs, as they recuperate energy to deliver back to the battery.

Another way it recuperates energy is via the roof, with 1.98 metres of solar paneling delivering 320 Watts of power into the battery when the car is parked. Audi says it can contribute 1000km of free driving a year via the solar roof.

Mechanically, the five-door liftback SUV stands at 4.88 metres long and 1.93 metres wide, though it’s only 1.54 metres high.

It might use the brakes only during heavy stops, but they’re still 20-inch carbon-ceramic discs at the front and 19-inches at the rear. The 22-inch wheels are wrapped in 265/40 R22 concept tyres, with the same five-link suspension with integrated rear-wheel steering that the next A8 will use.

Taking some of its design hints from the 'prologue' concept family, its drag coefficient is an extremely efficient 0.25Cd.

Its aerodynamic fiddles don’t stop at being slippery through the air. The car uses adaptive damping to lower itself at highway speeds for improved aerodynamic efficiency, while it also activates aero pieces in the engine bay, the sides of the car and at the rear to change the airflow over the car. The removal of rear-view mirrors (in favour of cameras, which are now legal in the EU) also reduces drag.

The car utilises Audi’s generation-next Matrix Laser headlights, combining this with LED and OLED lights. The Matrix OLED lights, used for lower beams, and the OLED rear lights will find their way into future production Audis, Dr Hackenberg said, and make their debut on the e-tron quattro concept.

The interior delivers 615 litres of luggage capacity and has a similar light, airy feel to the prologue concept cars that herald the next A8’s design language.

It uses a development of the TT’s Virtual Cockpit digital dash display, this time made from a curved OLED unit. There are touch displays on either side of the instrument cluster, the left one for the lighting and autonomous driving functions and the right for the multimedia systems.

While it’s not a declared autonomous car, the e-tron quattro concept is all but ready for self-driving work. It’s fitted with radar sensors, a stereo camera, a video camera, ultrasonic sensors and even a laser that constantly scans the road ahead of the car.

The concept combines all the sensor information into a central zFAS computer unit to give the car a real-time model of the road around and ahead of it, including other cars, pedestrians, cyclists and everything else the car detects.

Full coverage from motoring.com.au at Frankfurt motor show here