If at first you dont succeed, stop thinking logically and design something so white-hot radical it burns a hole straight through the middle of the drawing board and lands smouldering on the floor. We can assume that’s the brief at Audi’s ‘Design Loft’ in Malibu, California, which has dreamt up this concept for a shooting brake electric hypercar inspired by Audi’s dominant decade in Le Mans racing. This 23rd century rollerskate is the Audi PB18 e-tron.
Ignore the underwhelming name, merely initials referring the car’s unveiling at the Pebble Beach festival of brightly dyed corduroy and champagne pricier than liquid platinum. Concentrate instead on details like a low, mid-mounted 95kWh solid-state battery, capable of accepting a full, 361-mile charge in only 15 minutes, thanks to 800-volt charging capacity. Or, if you’re less stung by range anxiety, a claimed 0-62mph sprint of two seconds flat. That comes courtesy of three electric motors: one shared between the front wheels, and one each for the rears, developing a combined 661bhp, but capable of short ‘overboost’ spurts up to 753bhp. So far so ‘generic electric supercar concept’.
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