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It has been roughly a year since the first series production Audi with electric drive made its debut at the Geneva Motor Show in 2018.
Now Audi is giving an advance look at a further automobile with an all-electric drive at this year's Geneva Motor Show: the Audi Q4 E-Tron concept is a compact four-door SUV with an exterior length of 4.59 meters and an apparent relation to the Audi E-Tron.
Two electric motors mobilize 225kW of system power in the Q4 E-Tron concept. As is typical for Audi, the driving power of the concept vehicle is brought to the road with Quattro all-wheel drive. It will accelerate from zero to 100km/h in just 6.3 seconds, and onto an electronically limited top speed of 180km/h.
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A large battery with a capacity of 82 kilowatt hours takes up almost the entire space in the underbody area between the axles. In terms of range, the Q4 E-Tron can cover more than 450km.
Q4 E-Tron explained
The Q4 E-Tron’s front and rear axles are each powered by an electric motor. There is no mechanical connection between the axles. Instead, an electronic control ensures that the torque distribution is coordinated optimally.
For reasons of efficiency, the drive torque is generally distributed with a rear-axle bias. If the driver demands more power than the rear electric motor can supply, the electric all-wheel drive uses the front asynchronous motor to redistribute the torque as required to the front axle. Audi says that this also happens predicatively even before slip occurs in icy conditions or when cornering fast, or if the car understeers or oversteers.
The rear electric motor has an output of 150kW and 310Nm; the front engine supplies the front wheels with up to 75kW and 150Nm for a total system output of 225kW and 460Nm of torque. The aforementioned battery takes around 30min to return to 80% of the total capacity.
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The Audi Q4 E-Tron concept gives an advance look at what will be the fifth series production electric vehicle that the manufacturer will introduce by the end of 2020. Sales of the Audi E-Tron have already started, and the first vehicles will be delivered to the customers before the end of March 2019. Later this year, the Audi E-Tron Sportback will be presented, and the Audi Q2L E-Tron, which was designed specifically for the Chinese market, will roll off the assembly line.
The presentation of the production version of the four-door high-performance coupé Audi E-Tron GT, which is being developed at Audi Sport, is planned for the second half of 2020. The compact Audi Q4 E-Tron is to make its production debut at the same time.
Image: MotorPress
An electric future
Audi launched its electric offensive with the world premiere of the all-electric SUV, the Audi E-Tron, in September 2018. By 2025, Audi will offer twelve automobiles with all-electric drive in the most important markets worldwide and predicts that it’ll achieve roughly one-third of its sales with electrified models. The SUVs within this portfolio include the E-Tron and the E-Tron Sportback, due to make its debut in 2019. In addition, there will be a range of models with classic body layout such as Avant and Sportback.
The range will cover every relevant market segment from the compact class to the luxury class.
The Audi E-Tron GT concept show car, a coupé with a low floor, made its debut at the Los Angeles Auto Show in 2018. The technology in this automobile was created in collaboration with Porsche and will be developed into volume-production models by the end of 2020.
Image: MotorPress
