May

Audi Going Electric To “Offer Cars Without Exhaust Emissions”

Posted by admin Published in Audi

Add Audi to the list of automakers who plan to add an electric vehicle to their lineup.

The German automaker’s top executive says Audi sees tremendous opportunities for electric vehicles and will roll one out within 5 to 10 years, promising “by thereupon we will offer cars without exhaust emissions.”

“Electric cars offer great opportunities, which we have already seized on,” Chairman Rupert Stadler said in an interview with German magazine Welt am Sonntag. According to a Google translation of the interview, Audi is devoting a tremendous level of resources to the project. “Our research capacity within the group is larger than many competitors,” Stadler said.

Audi has bet heavily on clean diesel technology being an effective way to improve fuel economy without sacrificing performance - its gorgeous R8 TDI concept car offers 500 horsepower and a stump-pulling 737 pound-feet of torque, and the R10 diesel racer has dominated Le Mans. But Stadler says he expects electric drive trains to join diesels in dominating the market within a decade - particularly in urban areas.

So what would an electric Audi look like?

Stadler didn’t offer any details, but whether the R-Zero concept (pictured (above) from a few years ago is any indication, Audi is not going to offer a cute runabout like the Subaru R1e and it probably won’t go retro like BMW and its forthcoming electric Isetta. Audi has a reputation for sporty cars with elegant lines, and head of design Wolfgang Egger says it it will stick to that ethos as it develops smaller, more efficient vehicles.

“We prefer to transfer proven type

values to a smaller package,” he recently told Britain’s Car Magazine. “A contemporary city car must not be boring to look at and boring to drive. It is our job to enhance the grade by being visually intelligent in an appealing way.”

So an Audi EV will look more like the Metroproject Quatro (pictured at left) we saw final fall in Tokyo than the Mitsubishi i-MiEV.

Audi additionally is working on hybrids, even whether it isn’t bringing the Q7 hybrid to America. Willibert Schleuter, head of electronics development, told EE Times that “We have hybrid on our road map” and they “will be available in the foreseeable future,” but their success will rest on improving the range of the batteries while decreasing their cost.

“When I worked on my doctorate some 20 years ago, the battery was the
main obstacle [for the deployment of such cars] and that has not
changed,” he said. “Today’s batteries have better properties than the lead-acid
batteries of those days, but in terms of cruising range they still are
far from being comparable to combustion engines – unless one accepts a
dramatic increase in weight.”

For that reason, their appeal will be limited, Schleuter said, but “there is meaningful use for them, for instance within cities.
All-electrical vehicles will be outfitted for easy recharging of the
batteries. You will see the infrastructure develop to support that –
for instance while parked at the shopping center, supermarket or
division store.”

Original post by Chuck Squatriglia