Audi Sport is the new sub-brand high-performance Audi. It is responsible for directing and managing all projects of the brand of the four rings in terms of competition concerns, but will also take the controls of the new projects the models with the initials RS and the supercar R8. During the Paris Salon, the director of Audi Sport, Stephan Reil stated to TopGear that “there is a project at the moment, but why not”, after being questioned by the electrification for their models of street.
In this era of downsizing and electric and hybrid vehicles, we have all wondered at some time what will happen with performance cars for the street. The very Formula 1 is already using cars with hybrid propulsion, we have the Formula E and, among the sports cars for the street we also have hybrid options, such as, for example, the BMW i8 or the new Honda NSX. How long will it take to reach the mark of Ingolstadt?
Our fellow TopGear insisted to the chief of the division Audi Sport on this topic. It is possible that the model that appears in our header image, the Audi TT Cubsport, was the first to adopt this technology. In addition, and seeing the strong commitment of the Volkswagen Group in the Paris Salon with electric vehicles, there is the possibility that the RS models, within not much time, using electricity as energy for propulsion.
Stephan Reil claimed that “the question is not if we are going to do, but when.” “In the present does not fit with the RS models, but the world keeps turning and the development of the technology continues and continues. The time will come when an electric car of high-performance makes sense, but today is not that moment”.
Many media suggest that the following generation of the Audi R8 could use a technology of hybrid propulsion. It is likely, but taking into account that the supercar German has recently launched its second generation and that not even the variant convertible yet come to the streets, there is plenty of time to do this. With the TT RS, something similar happens, although we cannot rule out the variant Clubsport to which we referred at the beginning of this article.
In this way, it would not be very farfetched, for the next generation Audi A3 that is not very far from their end-of-cycle, let’s look at an Audi RS3 with heat engine and a design exercise, or even a production version, which to rest on an electrical system to achieve higher throughput while maintaining low levels of consumption and emissions. The time and the evolution of the technology will tell us.
Source – TopGear
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