WOW! And only $2.7 million USD? I’ll get 2 of them…
At last September’s Paris Motor Show, we were thrilled to see this very concept car, the Audi e-tron Spyder. The crisp lines of its carbon composite exterior, its tapering side windows, its airflow vents cut in the hood, its almost impossibly clean and sleek interior treatment… all of it spoke strongly without trying too hard.
After the September 2009 Frankfurt Motor Show debut of the R8-based all-electric e-tron, we then got the surprise of seeing an even smaller one – also called “e-tron” (perhaps to confuse and/or not give too much away regarding the design’s important future) at last January’s Detroit Auto Show. This second electric car, a hardtop, carried two electric motors pushing the rear wheels (versus the four motors of the R8 e-tron’s all-wheel drive, an ongoing programming challenge referred to within Audi as e-Quattro).
The e-tron Spyder, however, is not just a roofless version of that stunning Detroit e-tron coupe, as the model we’re driving here comes with an all-new plug-in diesel hybrid-electric drivetrain, and it’s 5.1 inches longer with more wheelbase, along with being 1.2 inches wider. On the other hand, the current Audi TT is 4.7 inches longer than the e-tron Spyder, so we’re still operating on a very small scale here.