Hot on the heels of last week’s Q4 e-tron and the e-tron GT from earlier this year, Audi has unveiled the A6 e-tron concept at the 2022 Shanghai Motorshow. It’s said that the only thing this concept shares with the “traditional” A6 is its dimensions, measuring 4.96 m long, 1.96 m wide, and 1.44 m high. It’s a bold statement from a company that intends to offer more electric vehicles to US consumers than any other luxury brand by the end of 2021.
The A6 e-tron concept previews the first
Audi to be built on the PPE (Premium Platform Electric) platform. Others
expected to join in 2022 will be the Q5 e-tron and Q6 e-tron. The platform has
been developed together with Porsche and will also support the next generation
electric Macan. Audi says they will unveil the first production vehicles based
on the PPE platform in the second half of 2022.
The concept is painted in “Heliosilver,” a
color Audi says enhances the aesthetic presence of the Audi A6 e-tron concept
with a “three-dimensional depth effect.” But it’s not just for looks. Audi says
this paint can reflect a significant percentage of the thermal radiation in
sunlight, thus reducing the amount of energy that enters the car’s body and,
above all, its interior. It’s so good at rejecting thermal heat that Audi
states occupants won’t have to use the car’s air-conditioning system in many
situations.
A hallmark of modern Audis has been their
lighting systems, with dynamic and fluid LED light arrays adding a large chunk
of character to their modern designs and functionality. The A6 e-tron concept
takes that a step further as its Digital Matrix LED front headlights can
achieve almost cinematic quality. Acting as mini-projectors (in the
old-fashioned sense of the term), the A6 e-tron can project a multi-player
video game onto a wall in front of it — which we guess can be helpful at
keeping a driver and passenger entertained while recharging.
The A6 e-tron concept gets new 3D-affect
lights in the rear. It’s a new generation of digital OLED elements that act as
a display as a continuous strip of lights. They can also create almost
unlimited customizable variations of digital light signatures, while the
dynamic lighting display can be adapted to the customer’s personal taste.
The A6 e-tron concept carries a 100 kW
battery located in the center of the car on the scalable and
purpose-built-for-EVs PPE platform. It shares the 800-watt charging tech with
the e-tron GT, allowing fast charge speeds with a compatible charger. Audi
boasts that just 10 minutes are enough to charge the battery to a level
sufficient to power the car more than 300 km, and it takes less
than 25 minutes to get from 5 to 80 percent of charge. Audi claims the total
range for this concept car is over 700 km.
The A6 e-tron concept sports a dual-motor
set-up with 470 hp and 800 Nm of torque that gives the car
all-wheel-drive. Audi says that entry-level models, which will presumably
feature only one motor powering a single axle, will accelerate to 100 km/h in around seven seconds, while high-performance variants will make the
sprint in less than four. As the name implies, the new PPE architecture is
specific for cars with premium aspirations. It supports longer wheelbase form
factors than the MEB platform used to underpin the production Audi Q4 e-tron.
Meanwhile, the lower-volume Audi e-tron GT sits on the J1 platform, along with
the Porsche Taycan.
The A6 e-tron concept is the first to
adopt the PPE platform, which will underpin cars initially in the C-segment and
later also in the B- and D-segments. We’ll have to wait until the latter half
of next year to see just what form any PPE-based car will take, although it’s
already been confirmed that a Q6 e-tron that rides on this new architecture
will emerge in 2022.
