Aniruddh Parmar
Electric SUVs are extremely booming in the market at the moment. Just after the launch of Mercedes-Benz’s EQC and the announcement of BMW’s iNEXT crossover, the third German counterpart has also put their player in the game. It is the all-new, all-electric Audi E-Tron.
Audi has been teasing the SUV for a long time and finally has launched it officially at an event in San Francisco. The E-Tron is Audi’s first fully electric vehicle going to mass production. There is nothing much to talk about the looks of the car as it was almost revealed in the teasers and carries the same Q-series character of the brand.
The SUV is powered by two asynchronous motors that come paired with a 95 kWh battery pack. Surprisingly, Audi hasn’t released horsepower and torque figures but confirmed that the SUV accelerates from 0-60 mph (96 km/h) in 5.5 seconds and will go up to 200 km/h of top speed.
Audi has also not revealed the most important information about an electric vehicle- the range. Though some reports say that the E-Tron has a range of about 402km, Audi has not made it official yet. To increase the driving range, Audi has developed an innovative recuperation system using which the electric motors recover energy when the driver releases the accelerator and depresses the brake pedal. Audi claims that this system provides about 30 per cent of the e-tron’s range, variable with the driving conditions.
An all-new electric all-wheel drive system has also been introduced with the e-tron. This new system redistributes torque between the axles in a fraction of a second allowing optimal traction in all conditions. The EV also offers seven different driving modes to choose from according to the situation.
One big change that catches the attention is the replacement of the side mirrors by small cameras that send live images to small displays in the vehicle’s door panels. The cabin comes with all the new technologies the company has. It overall has nothing extremely new compared to other Audi SUVs.
The E-Tron is engineered for both AC and DC charging support. In an industry first, the e-tron debuts a DC fast charging capability of up to 150 kW available at select high-speed public charging stations. This can charge the battery to its 80 percent capacity in only approximately 30 minutes. Using a standard 9.6 kW AC capsule charger will charge the car overnight.
In the US, Audi E-Tron will be available in two main variants- Premium Plus and Prestige. Above these two, Audi is offering the E-Tron First edition that comes with additional features like 21-inch alloys, Dynamic orange paint brake callipers, wooden finishing in the cabin. The first edition wil be limited to 999 units only.
With the E-tron, Audi has taken the first step towards electrification of its cars. We can expect more and more EVs being added to the range, including the rumoured range-topping electric R8.
Source: Audi