AUDI_ e-tron_
Ever seen an Audi smoking its tyres like this? Rear-driven R8s or an RS6 equipped with an optional Ollie Marriage excluded, obvs. This is the all-electric, all-wheel-drive e-tron S, and it’ll throw shapes like few Audis before it. That’s not solely why the e-tron is our plug-in SUV of the year, mind. We’re not that childish. But it certainly helps. Audi’s engineers have seen the potential for fun nestled among electric motors at each axle (and in time, each wheel) and fully rinsed it. So, in Comfort mode, the S provides the unflappable AWD experience Audi’s peddled since the quattro launched in 1980; cheeky little hints of power being deployed at the rear, but only ever for an utmost professional cornering attitude. This is the setting for when a snowpocalypse suddenly strikes and you’re still intent on getting home.
Dynamic mode, however, is for the empty supermarket car park when you’ve got back in one piece. It’s not a hooligan on the surface, but loosen the stability control and it’ll allow some quite outrageous angles of oversteer with only mild provocation.
Which is more important than it appears. Honest. It’s proof electric cars can be about so much more than their noveltywears-off acceleration. If Audi’s cotton wool-wrapped handling balance can be shaken up by mischievous management of EV motors, then absolutely anyone’s can.
You don’t have to choose the 496bhp, 718lb ft e-tron S, either. It’s the third and thus far most powerful variant of an ever-expanding range, with the lowlier, 310bhp e-tron 50 kicking things off below £60,000 or from a mildly staggering £350 a month if you shop well. There’s a regular hatchback or the swoopier (to these eyes uglier) Sportback, while dinkier, yet more affordable e-trons are coming, chiefly one that sits upon the same platform as Volkswagen’s Golf-sized ID range.
Sure, most entrants in the crossover market make our face resemble the slanty-mouthed emoji. But a plumper car with a higher driving position can host a fully electric drivetrain rather well, with a nice wedge of space below the cabin for a quantity of batteries that enables a proper range figure.
With the e-tron and its myriad variants, Audi is moving things on at pace. And with prices that might actually tempt people to make the jump from a default diesel.