Frankfurt Motor Show 2009
Audi e-tron
The e-tron study is a two-seater coupe made out of lightweight aluminium and carbonfibre, and powered by a lithium ion battery positioned at the front to achieve a 58% rear weight distribution with the four electric motors housed at the four corners of the car. The sports car promises sports car power – 313bhp and torque is 3319lb ft – reaching 62mph in just 4.8 seconds and able to speed up to 154mph.Working with the R8, the design team lead by Stefan Sielaff, set out to explore how to transform the sports car into an electric car. ‘You cannot just take a car like the R8 and simply replace the engine with an electric one,’ he says. ‘We started to test to see what could be the language, the formal repertoire, for our future electric car.’The e-tron maintains certain Audi generic codes, but adds to this an extra dose of form follows function. For instance Sielaff and his team created cooling systems, much like a household radiator, which when needed act like fans directing the extra heat created by the battery. Weight has been shed wherever possible. The thin seats are made of magnesium and the slim dashboard houses only the most essential information.
The company doesn’t believe you can design green cars from a rational point of view. ‘It has to be emotional,’ says Sielaff. He makes a comparison to food. ‘No one wanted to eat Soya products 10 or 20 years ago. But now healthy products on the whole have been made desirable. You need to make green cars delicious in the same way.'
The e-tron study is a two-seater coupe made out of lightweight aluminium and carbonfibre, and powered by a lithium ion battery positioned at the front to achieve a 58% rear weight distribution with the four electric motors housed at the four corners of the car. The sports car promises sports car power – 313bhp and torque is 3319lb ft – reaching 62mph in just 4.8 seconds and able to speed up to 154mph.Working with the R8, the design team lead by Stefan Sielaff, set out to explore how to transform the sports car into an electric car. ‘You cannot just take a car like the R8 and simply replace the engine with an electric one,’ he says. ‘We started to test to see what could be the language, the formal repertoire, for our future electric car.’The e-tron maintains certain Audi generic codes, but adds to this an extra dose of form follows function. For instance Sielaff and his team created cooling systems, much like a household radiator, which when needed act like fans directing the extra heat created by the battery. Weight has been shed wherever possible. The thin seats are made of magnesium and the slim dashboard houses only the most essential information.
The company doesn’t believe you can design green cars from a rational point of view. ‘It has to be emotional,’ says Sielaff. He makes a comparison to food. ‘No one wanted to eat Soya products 10 or 20 years ago. But now healthy products on the whole have been made desirable. You need to make green cars delicious in the same way.'
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cars 30 Sep 2009
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