SPY PICS: Audi e-tron on track

Audi has said it will have its all-electric R8 e-tron on the market by the end of this year and these Carparazzi spy shots, depicting an undisguised e-tron gliding silently through industrial backblocks somewhere in Germany, tend to confirm it is well on track.

The photo car looks pretty much the same as a regular Audi R8 save for the stick-on script on the doors, an e-tron badge on the bonnet, the lack of an exhaust pipe and an opaque rear window. Minimal air venting (not so vital with a full EV) at the front presumably helps with aerodynamics.

The licence plate (digitally obscured in the photos) reads “HOCHVOLT” – which is German for high voltage – and there is a sign on the driver’s side rear quarter window that warns of the danger of electric shock.

Carparazzi says the car is a “dead ringer” for the car featured in Audi’s latest video that shows how its artificially induced sound track was created.

The A8 e-tron is powered by four electric motors giving enough off the line punch to drain the blood from your head on its way to sub five-second acceleration from zero to 100km/h. All-up, the R8 e-tron produces 230kW and an astounding, truck-like, 4500Nm of torque.

Audi is targeting a range of 250km, but the 200km/h e-tron is reportedly not there yet.

Presumably the production car will be more sorted than the version driven by our Euro correspondent Michael Taylor in January 2011. In addition to being left somewhat wanting in terms of interior comforts (thinly padded fibreglass seats, alcantara in place of leather) the e-tron’s steering was uncommunicative and vague, and the big brakes were let down by an odd-feeling floor pedal.

The e-tron will be produced in limited numbers and, in the manner of most early EV, will be leased out, rather than sold to customers outright.

— with Carparazzi

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