You have probably seen this lolly pop red premium BEV from Audi. The E-tron is quite possibly one of the most eye catching electric cars that I have seen that is actually expected to go into production. Now I know that at this point it is only set to be a limited production run of only 1000 cars, but imagine if they migrated the system down to cars like the A3 or even the A1.
A logical comparison would be to compare the Audi E-Tron to the Tesla roadster, if we assume that the price difference is nominal (very big assumption given its premium priced platform sister the R8 is already quite exclusively priced) we can then consider the two most important questions that people would ask.
Question # 1, what is the range? According to Motortrend magazine which did a limited write up, the E-tron gets 154 miles per charge while the Tesla gets 200 miles per charge.
Question # 2, how long will it take to recharge? This is a bigger animal to tackle and can’t be answered without thoughts on your garage plug. Just like any BEV or plug-in electric hybrid system, the time to charge depends on your charger capacity, the wiring infrastructure in place at your home and whether the transformer from your utility can handle the additional load drawn from your charger. For example Audi suggests a 2.5 hr charge time if you use a 400 volt charger. You may want to notify your utility or else they will think you have a grow-op in your garage.
The really interesting technological interpretation of electric drive is derived from the four electric motors used. They will supposed slip torque 30/70 front to back respectively. I wonder if each one will individually motivate a different wheel. Can you say electric powered Quattro. Its a pretty cool approach that lines up quite nicely with the all wheel drive based performance philosophy at Audi. Lets see if this makes it to North America.
