Audi targets Bentley
The GrandSphere and SkySphere concepts make clear Audi’s ultra-luxury ambitions.
Audi is planning a private jet for the road. Its latest concepts – the luxury-lounge GrandSphere and the morphing, open-top SkySphere – are proof of its lofty ambition. After a few false starts, it wants to go from business class to the VIP elite.
Design boss Marc Lichte and his deputies – exterior head Philipp Römers, interior head Norbert Weber and senior design director of Audi America Gael Buzyn – have been tasked with creating a next-generation A8 to have Bentley worried. On this evidence, they might just manage it.
While the brains behind the GrandSphere and SkySphere concepts have taken inspiration from classic coachbuilt Horch models, they are firmly future-orientated, with advanced self-driving capability, electric power and sustainability all front of mind.
The five-door neo-GT GrandSphere, which will eventually replace the A8 saloon, is well over five metres long and two metres wide. At just 1390mm tall it’s low-slung like a sports car, and the vast 3190mm wheelbase gives it both great proportions and the promise of decent dynamics. The vast 23-inch wheels were inspired by the 1991 Audi Avus concept.
You enter the leather-free cabin via rear-hinged doors and enter a space of recycled materials and wood veneers from sustainably cultivated hornbeam trees. The seats recline ⊲
to an extent familiar to anyone who’s had a doze in first class after enjoying a second glass with lunch.
Don’t feel like taking a nap? Then check out the full-width projection zone (above, top) which provides on-demand access to a video conference or a movie, and can take you on a virtual tour of your destination. If you’d rather, you can actually drive the car. During a complex but rapid conversion process, a steering column unfolds from its recess, complete with a quartic wheel wrapped in black caoutchouc (a natural, non-vulcanised rubber) and an oblong monitor appears behind with a secondary head-up display.
Where does the SkySphere come in? It’s a dream machine with breathtakingly radical proportions. It too is capable of Level 4 autonomy. It physically changes shape at the base of the A-pillar, with a short wheelbase for enthusiastic driving that can grow longer for automated grand touring.
The SkySphere also demonstrates what can happen when Audi casts aside many of its long-standing design elements, including the single-frame grille. US design chief Buzyn says: ‘The grille is no longer a fixed item. Instead, any number of different graphics can be pre-programmed by re-grouping dozens of OLED triangles on a relatively tall impact-resistant screen which wraps round to the front wings.’
While the eye-catching SkySphere may never be built, it’ll influence the production version of the GrandSphere. ‘Around about 2025, we want to have a new vehicle positioned in the luxury car segment,’ says Römers. ‘We want to bring as many of these design elements into production as possible.’
Lichte confirms that the GrandSphere is way more than just an idea. He says: ‘Concept isn’t really the right word. This is very close to the real thing, including the radically reimagined interior. Only the front end of the GrandSphere will change, by adopting some of the elements of the SkySphere.’
The VW Group’s Artemis platform will be key to the production GrandSphere. It features a 120kWh battery pack and an e-motor on each axle for e-quattro traction, 710bhp and 679lb ft, a sub-4.0sec 0-62mph sprint and 466 miles of range. The 800-volt platform – complete with active air suspension and rear-wheel steering – is a combined effort with Porsche.
Will this be enough to achieve the sort of sales that have eluded generations of petrol and diesel A8s? The flexibility and roominess provided by Artemis could make the crucial difference. And, since Bentley is now closer to Audi within the
VW Group’s complex management structure, the Crewe-based luxury car maker can take full advantage of Artemis too, with the Brit brand planning to build its own EV on the same architecture, targeting a 2025 launch.
The project could involve a great two-way exchange of expertise between an emboldened, more ambitious Audi and a successful, empowered Bentley – so long as they can avoid stealing each other’s customers…
The Artemis platform is key, with e-quattro traction, 710bhp and 466 miles of range