GENEVA MOTOR SHOW: Audi Q8 Sport concept

Three months ago, Audi was still denying the existence of a Q8 SUV and today it has two of them.

The hybrid-powered Geneva motor show star follows up the Q8 concept from January’s Detroit show and pulls its technology into an impressively practical, tantalizingly close-to-production show car.

The 5020mm-long Q8 Sport is a blatant preview of Audi’s impending Q8 five-door, full-sized SUV, and so is its plug-in hybrid powertrain. Boasting up to 1200km of range, the 350kW powertrain will push the Q8 Sport concept 0-100km/h in an impressively brief 4.7sec.

The Q8 will use this powertrain, which combines an 85-litre fuel tank and a relatively tiny 0.9kWh lithium-ion battery, as its flagship model when it reaches production in 2018.

The concept car for Geneva was originally slated to be called the RS Q8 (Audi even sent out embargoed images of the concept wearing RS Q8 badge), but the company changed its mind at the last minute. Now both show car and the production version will be badged SQ8.

The petrol-electric powertrain is definitely also on its way into future versions of the lower-riding A6, A7, A8, plus the Q7.

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“The drive system of the Q8 Sport Concept is a major step towards optimizing efficiency. The combination of mild hybrid technology and combustion engines sets a new benchmark,” Audi chairman Rupert Stadler said.

“In the future, it will be used in many Audi models,” he confirmed.

The internal-combustion part of the hybrid powertrain is a twin-turbo, direct-injection 3.0-litre, all-alloy V6 motor.

Audi has plucked some of the best technology from the SQ7’s stunningly good 4.0-litre TDI V8 too. This includes the fast SUV’s 48-Volt electrical system and its electric “compressor”, which has been affectionately (but incorrectly) dubbed an ‘electric turbocharger’.

Just as it does in the SQ7, the Q8 Sport’s compressor can spin at up to 70,000rpm and is used to force air through the engine at low engine speeds and to cover off any possible turbo lag from the V6.

That helps the V6 motor to punch out 331kW and 530Nm of torque. In addition, it’s mated to a disc-shaped 20kW/170Nm electric motor mounted inside the eight-speed automatic transmission, giving a total system output of 350kW and 700Nm.

The 48-Volt system is needed to drive the Integrated Starter Generator (ISG), which regenerates the energy to quickly reload the 0.9kWh lithium-ion battery so it can spin the compressor again.

There isn’t a lot of electricity storage in the battery, yet Audi insists it will allow the two-tonne-plus SUV to stand down the V6 in light-throttle, stop-start traffic.

The Q8 Sport concept rides on 23-inch forged alloy wheels, complete with 305/35 profile tyres and carbon ceramic brakes that, at 508mm in diameter, could easily double as Captain America’s shield.

And we all know that those who oppose his shield must yield.

Its styling [the Q8, not Captain America’s shield] is very slightly evolved from the Detroit concept thanks to a tweak of the grille design to accept a honeycomb lattice feature and a black surround. And it’s 12mm wider at the wheelarches.

Both the Q8 Sport concept and the production Q8 share their underpinnings (and most of the powertrains) with the Q7 (complete with its air suspension systems and quattro all-wheel drive system), yet it is 30mm shorter than the big SUV.

It also rides lower than the Detroit version of the Q8, while a black diffuser and oval exhaust pipes dominate the rear-end visuals.