2012 Audi E-tron: Quad-Drive EV Sports Coupe With Style, No Emissions

2012 Audi E-tron: Quad-Drive EV Sports Coupe With Style, No Emissions

By John O'Dell December 12, 2009

By John O'Dell, Senior Editor

When you write about this stuff all the time, driving electric cars gets to be, well, almost commonplace.

Except for the cart-like, low-speed neighborhood EVs, they've all got lots of torque, no tailpipe emissions, accelerate as though flung from a catapult and - but for tire and wind noise and the whine of cooling fads and rapidly spinning motors - are awfully quiet.

Then comes one like the 2012 Audi E-tron concept, which adds to that standard list of ingredients a hefty helping of sleek and sexy, some uber-technology and the extra-added bonus of being a car that will actually see the light of day as a production model.

When we were offered us the chance for an Audi E-tron test drive, even though the total distance was less than five miles and top speed was limited to 62 miles an hour, it was like getting an early Christmas present - scratch that, it was an early Christmas present.

The "Speed Red" E-Tron (it was a bright electric orange at the car show) is a blast just to look at, and we were able to visually crawl all over it - although Audi engineers wouldn't lift the nose or the rear hatch to reveal the maze of wiring, computers, motor casings, batteries and cooling apparatus beneath the tautly stretched carbon fiber and aluminum skin.

"Still a concept," E-tron program technical director Thomas Krauter said. That's shorthand for too much stuff that's not so nicely finished that the company would want to let an outsider get a look.

----------

Spare interior features dual-gauge instrument panel with center data and navi screen, pop-up "shifter" lever, neon-green lighting to indicate state of battery readiness.

----------

Others have estimated the value of the hand-built prototype at closer to $2 million. There have been hints that Audi's aiming at a selling price of around $160,000 (same neighborhood as a loaded version of the new performance-tweaked Tesla Roadster Sport ) when a small-volume production version hits the market in late 2011 or early 2012.

Stand-Alone Model

Outside, the E-tron - which initially will be produced in a run of just 100 cars to be offered for sale in North American and Europe, with as many as 1,000 for total production if demand is there - is a low-slung, clean-lined cross between a slightly scaled down R8 and a gently squashed TT Coupe.

Audi says that the familial resemblance to the R8 is intentional - the production car might be called something like the R8e - but is not indicative of a lot of parts sharing.

The E-tron, in fact, shares no exterior or powertrain parts with the longer, narrower and taller V8 powered R8 sports coupe that went on sale early last year, or with this year's R8 V10, said Peter Kainz, head of future development projects at Audi R&D.

What it shared, Krauter told us, are suspension pieces - a good thing because the conventional R8 is a dream on the road and the E-tron, with its lower center of gravity, adds extra stickiness that makes you feel as though getting into trouble on a wild hairpin taken at speed could never happen.

We weren't able to put that theory to the test - in addition to the electronically capped top speed - about half of what the production model will be allowed to do - we were required to tail a California Highway Patrol black-and-white that cleared traffic for us on the all-to-short short run along the Golden State's famed Pacific Coast Highway just north of Malibu at Point Magu.

 Our drive was the last (we're told) of a series of media drives provided by Audi after the car made its North American debut Dec. 2 at the Los Angeles Auto Show.

Inside Line contributor Matt Davis got in well ahead of us on the schedule and his piece has been posted on Edmunds' enthusiast site for a few days now and is a great place to go for another view of things E-tronic.

Ready to Go

We're mostly in Matt's camp, though, especially on this: The concept drives like a production-ready car, not like the usual auto show concept that's pasted together with wishes and dreams and, if drivable at all, is likely to fall to pieces at the mere sight of a pothole.

And if the concept is so nicely fitted together, we're betting the finished production model will be a real killer.  The most noticeable things about our drive - the bits that separate the E-tron from most other EVs we're driven - were the steering feel and the noise levels.

The electromechanical steering was set deliberately tight and is an exemplar of German precision. The car will go exactly where you point, with not even a microsecond of hesitation. There's no remoteness in steering feel - it's if it were directly attached to the wheels.

----------

Plexiglas wind screen automatically opens to increase battery cooling when needed, then closes for improved aerodynamics.

----------

The development team's second leap was in tuning - if that's the proper term - the sounds of the electric motors and battery-cooling fan. Most EVs whine, some painfully until your ears get used to the pitch.

The E-Tron hums.

The key is a little high, but the overall impression is that this is a machine that's comfortable with what it is being called on to do; not a screaming meemie about to come apart at the seams.

Those electric drive motors - there are four of them, one for each wheel - are mounted centrally in the car, two under the tilt-up nose, two under the rear hatch.

Each is linked to its own wheel via a single speed reduction gear (a 1:6 ratio up front and a 1:7 ratio in back). Together they pump out 309 horsepower. We'll talk torque in a moment.

Power is weighted 30 percent to the front wheels and 70 percent to the rears, and the use of individual motors means torque and traction adjustments are instantaneous and close to infinite.

This could be a rear-biased all-wheel drive car, a front-biased AWD, a three-wheel drive, a two- wheel drive, even a one-wheel drive, as the situation called for it, said Krauter. And each wheel could have its own, and quite different, torque assignment at any given time.

Wouldn't you hate to be the computer that has to control all that!

Twisting Torque

Now, about that torque: Audi has departed from its usual Germanic bluntness to fiddle a bit with our minds on the issue of torque, promoting the E-tron as a 3,319 ft.-lb. monster.

That's the number in all the headlines and the number used to compare the E-tron with other cars.

But it's not the "real" torque figure - the drive motor's shaft output used by other automakers, and by Audi for its other cars -in official stats and by the buff books and on-line magazines, including our own Inside Line, in regular car reviews.

Instead, it is the number than measures torque at the wheels; torque after it is multiplied by gears and other factors.

The more useful torque-at-shaft number - which Audi says is difficult to accurately calculate because of the E-tron's quad-motor, quad-drive setup - is likely closer to 300 lb.-ft., which is nothing to sneer about.

It can launch the 3,527-pound E-Tron to 62 mph from a standing start in 4.8 second, according to Audi. We estimate 0-60 will come in at 4.5 seconds.

The electric Tesla roadster, which is 800 pounds lighter than the E-tron, boasts 0-60 acceleration of 3.9 seconds and does it with 273 lb.-ft. of output-shaft torque.

Real acceleration isn't something we got to test, however: In addition to the speed limiter and the CHP cars leading and following us, we were told that the concept we drove is still far heavier than the production weight Audi cites in its figures.

Four Motors For More Fun

With speed and torque dialed back to keep overly aggressive media types from tearing its guts out, we found the concept car - while still showing impressive thrust at launch - couldn't quite keep up with a CHP officer in one of the Patrol's new Dodge Challenger police models.

We having those kinds of dreams now, waiting for the chance to try a fully-functioning, unlimited E-tron.

The E-tron's motors and are fed by a roughly half-ton, suitcase-shaped lithium-ion battery pack mounted vertically just behind the seats. The positioning helps achieve a weight distribution of 42 percent front, 58 percent rear.

The Sanyo-built batteries are cooled by a trio of radiators, small ones ahead of each front wheel and a large one under that awesomely flexible polished aluminum air "scoop" on the rear hatch (a small electric motor pushes up on the leading edge of the aluminum fins, forcing them open (right) to gulp air when cooling is needed and allowing them to lay flat (left) at other times.

The battery pack, made up of 550 individual cells, has full capacity of 53 kilowatt hour but, like all lithium-ion batteries, is never fully discharged - a measure that prolongs battery life.   Usable capacity is 42.4 kilowatt-hours.

That's sufficient, Krauter said, to provide a "minimum" of 120 miles of range at highway speeds - company executives earlier had said range was estimated at 150 miles. Use the full 125 mpg capacity that Audi will permit and the juice is likely to run dry in about 15 minutes  - or 30 to 40 miles (that's the reason top speed is limited; you'd barely get around the block if the car were allowed to hit 175 or 180 mpg.

The pack can be charged in just 2 hours from a 400-volt circuit that Krauter said is standard in many German garages but would require an act of Congress and a dedicated power plant to get into a U.S. home.

A 240-volt circuit would do the job in 6-8 hours and a conventional 110-volt circuit would take a full 16 hours to accomplish a full recharge.

----------

E-tron's charger port, reflected in chromed cover, includes an easy-to read, lighted indicator that shows state of charge. On-board system automatically detects and adjusts for various chargers' voltage and amperage.

----------

The concept has the usual concept-car paraphernalia including rear and side cameras instead of mirrors; LED head and tail lights with fully integrated turn signals and high beams; a clear nose piece that covers the finned aluminum grille, raising and lowering automatically as air intake is needed; and side vent covers that stay closed and flush against the E-tron's flanks for aerodynamic improvement when not needed to cool the battery.

Some Show to Go

The show-car seats are thin aluminum-and-leather constructions; the instrument panel is reduced to a pair of circular gauges for speed and battery power output and a rectangular info- and navigation screen that cycles through all the powertrain and performance data you'd ever want.

Many of the elements will disappear from the production model. The seats are too thin, some of the polished aluminum trim might give way to lighter materials; the side cameras will be replaced with mirrors; the turbine-blade 19-inch show wheels will go; and the roofline will get a bit taller to accommodate insulation and strengthening material that the concept doesn't have.

Some of the streamlining - like air intakes that open and close - might also go away, sacrificed for production simplicity and the weight savings that removing all those doors and motors would bring.

The main rear-view camera, however, will likely remain as there is no rear glass and no likelihood of a redesign that will create one.

Actually, there's no need for a window in back as the camera images projected onto what would be a rear-view mirror if there were glass in back provided a great view of what was going on behind the car as we rolled down PCH.

Besides, Audi is concentrating on looking forward.

----------

Shifter and Audi's MMI infotainment controller share space on a narrow, leather-covered center console.

----------

Audi has big plans for the future of electric drive, including a roadster model of the E-tron. After demand is gauged by the sales pace of those first 100 E-tron production coupes, the factory could ramp up to make "many hundreds more," said one executive.

The automaker also is doing "a couple" of design studies using adaptations of its e-drive system on other platforms, said R&D chief Kainz.

Looks like more Christmas presents to come!

John O'Dell:  is an AutoObserver Senior Editor. Follow @AutoObserver on Twitter.