Audi E-tron Plugs In To Rival I-Pace

Wraps come off new electric SUV that’s set to take fight to Jaguar and Tesla with 250-mile range and 150kW fast charging.

- John McIlroy

THE Jaguar I-Pace has grabbed the headlines since it hit the roads earlier this summer, but one of its main rivals has just been revealed. This is the Audi e-tron, a pure-electric SUV that’ll arrive in January as a competitor for the British car and the Tesla Model X.

The first pure-electric Audi, the e-tron is a 4.9-metre SUV that’s designed to sit between the Q5 and Q7. You can see influences from the likes of the Q8, but there are unique e-tron touches such as a flush grille and, more radically, cameras that replace the regular side mirrors.

Its shape is relatively conventional, though – a reflection of customer feedback, according to lead exterior designer Stephan Fahr-Becker. He said: “In the clinics the customers asked us, ‘Can we just have a nice-looking electric vehicle?’ If we’d ended up with something that looked like a stranded whale, nobody would have been ready for it.”