Audi e-tron

This is Audi’s second electric concept vehicle. It’s only 3.93 meter long and 1.78 meter wide and just 1.22 meter tall, comfy for two persons. It weighs a mere 1,350 kg, has two electric motors with a combined output of 204hp and 2,650Nm of torque, which accelerates the coupe with an ASF (Audi Space Frame)-design aluminum body from standstill to 100km/h in just 5.9 seconds. Flat out, it’ll do 200km/h, that’s fast for an electric car.

Now, you would imagine something so little with so much torque would probably be a monster to drive. You would be right. Now, this car has Audi’s latest innovation, which they call “torque vectoring” that gives it a thrilling level of active precision and excellent traction. Audi describes this low weight, short wheelbase and perfect 40:60 weight distribution that gives it dynamic handling, has go-kart agility, good on bends and neutral right up to the handling limit. It’s good to know that they’ve decided to go with rear-wheel drive on this one.

How much juice does it have in the lithium-ion batteries? It contains 45kilowatt-hours available, which makes a range of up to 250kilometers realistically possible. It’s charged with household current (230volts, 16 amperes) via cable and plug and the socket is behind a cover at the back of the car. Charging takes 11hours if the battery is empty but use a heavy current (400 volts, 32amperes), and it’ll cut the charging time to a mere 2 hours. The battery also charges on the go, during braking the alternator converts kinetic energy into electric energy, which feeds into the on-board electrical system.

Here’s one interesting bit of the car that I like, it comes with intelligent headlights and they are not the adaptive kind that you find on the usual German cars. The headlights are the core of a fully automatic light assistance system that reacts flexibly to any situation. It recognizes weather conditions and adapts the headlights to fog or rain. The technology at the heart of the light assistance system is a camera that works together with a fast computer to detect oncoming traffic, recognize lane and measure visibilities, such as in the event of a fog. The LED elements changes appearance and also change the front of the vehicle depending on the speed driven and ambient conditions. Now that’s what I call intelligence!