The Audi R8 e-tron Has Left The Building.

An Audi R8 e-tron spotted in the wild
An Audi R8 e-tron spotted in the wild

Given the current fetish for electric cars you couldn’t be blamed for thinking Audi would have put a little more publicity and hype into their electric supercar. Hell, I didn’t even know it had gone from concept to production let alone to obituary status until I read the news of its demise.

It’s hard to tell what Audi were thinking as the car never appeared officially in any car buying channels. It neither showed up in sales literature or Audi’s online model lineup.

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An Audi R8 e-tron midway through the assembly process.
An Audi R8 e-tron midway through the assembly process.

I’ve seen speculation they went a little too overboard on the exclusivity angle, after all, setting a million euro price tag seems a little redundant if no-one knows they exist and are for sale.

The more likely possibility I think is that they simply wanted to make and sell enough to develop some technology then offset the development costs with some million euro sales.

When speaking to Car And Driver Audis spokesman did indeed mention they could have built more.

An Audi spokesman and R8 e-tron test driver talking about the car to Car And Driver magazine.
An Audi spokesman and R8 e-tron test driver talking about the car to Car And Driver magazine.

So, despite it’s appearance in Iron Man 3 that I didn’t even notice, the e-tron is dead. Yet without Audi pushing the technology envelope, I wouldn’t have been able to make such a terrible and nerdy joke.
 

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