The age of Tesla not being taken seriously by German luxury automakers closed a couple of years ago — and in a few weeks at the Frankfurt motor show, we’ll see a number of salvos from established automakers building electric models for high-end customers.
First up in the new wave: Audi, which today revealed this sketch of what it calls the E-Tron Quattro SUV concept, the precursor to a mid-size, battery-powered vehicle the company plans to launch in 2018 for regular production. According to Audi, the E-Tron Quattro will have a range of about 310 miles, impressive for a vehicle that’s somewhere between a Q5 and Q7 in size, due in part to some of the slickest aerodynamics ever developed for a SUV. One hint about its layout may be that Audi specified it seats only four; it’s likely that passenger space had to be sacrificed for battery room at that range.
Audi has been tinkering with pure electric vehicles for years, but has never built them in any real volume; its R8 e-Tron project was sold only as a special order car for more than $1 million a pop to European buyers. With the Tesla Model X due out by the end of the year, and BMW, Porsche and Mercedes all stepping up their electric car projects, the market for luxury EVs will only get more crowded from here.
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