Audi e-tron Concept II Video

Audi e-tron Concept II Video Transcript

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>> Now, Audi's been shopping around the very attractive e-tron concept on the car show circuit for a while, but here's a new version of it. I mean, it's not even on the market yet, and they've done a revision. This is the e-tron 2, I guess you'd call it. Kind of the same in the front, quite different in the rear, a little more of short, coupled, cab-rear, fastback design. And where the original e-tron talks about powering all four wheels electrically, this guy's got electric motor and battery all in the rear, kind of a dramatic 60/40 weight resolution as a result, but again, just driving the rear wheels with two separate electric motors. It's about nine inches shorter than the e-tron we've seen on the car show circuit, and if it's 2800 pounds, about 800 or 900 of that is battery, hence, the kind of lopsided weight reduction. But they're handling and compensating for all that with a sophisticated suspension technology, of course. Mirror technology is going camera-based, of course. Notice these little LCD panels inside that replicate the external mirror of today, and where that mirror used to be on the outside is a rear-firing digital cameral. The numbers Audi's quoting are almost crazy town stuff, 155-mile range on a charge. Ok, good enough. 204 horsepower, 1955 footpounds of torque? Wouldn't that tear the car apart? Now, regardless of where you put that big, chunky weight of a battery in an electric car, it's still weight, and it will drag down the car's efficiency and range, so where do you compensate until battery technology gets lighter? You do it with a space frame design, which this car has underneath, and even within that, those components of the space frame are largely carbon fiber. This car is going to be coming to the market in some form or other in 2012. Not exactly tomorrow, but for a car this audacious, and frankly, this desirable, you can hardly wait. ^M00:01:47 [ Music ]