German luxury carmaker Audi might be facing some software hiccups with its all-new all-electric e-tron Quattro SUV, but that’s not stopping them from looking well forward and thinking about what form the ‘e-tron’ badge will take next. It seems that the form decided upon is that of a sleek, 4-door saloon that’ll be dubbed the ‘e-tron GT,’ and it’ll have its sights trained on the Tesla Model S P100D from the get-go.
It was a tiny bit of a disappointment that when the e-tron Quattro came out, its performance times were markedly slower than the Tesla Model X that it rivals. Where the Jaguar I-Pace demonstrated clearly that it was entirely capable of leaving the Tesla for dead, it was like the e-tron Quattro didn’t even try, with its 5.5-second 0-100km/h time woefully slower than the 2.9-seconds touted by the most potent Model X.
But the e-tron GT, which will complement the e-tron Quattro SUV, will have a greater emphasis on power output. The GT will share its underpinnings with the Porsche Taycan, and Audi’s powertrain boss Ulrich Widmann has admitted to Autocar that the e-tron GT will “get some genes from Porsche, and ass a lot of genes from Audi.”
The e-tron GT will be the first e-tron to make use of a ‘flat-floor’ solution for its battery packaging, as opposed to the ‘high-floor’ setup that’s been employed in the e-tron Quattro. It’s not just the battery setup that’ll change, but even the battery itself will change. The e-tron GT will offer 350kW fast-charging ability, the first for Audi, and it’ll allow for 80% recharge from flat in just 12-minutes.
Despite only having been confirmed for production back in March, the e-tron GT is already being promised as a “highly-dynamic” proposition, something that Tesla really can’t boast about at all. The e-tron GT is slated for production at the Neckarsulm factory, in Germany.
For the best deals on a new Audi, check out our Showroom.
