The Audi R8 e-tron has been haunting the halls of Audi for nearly a decade, and now the company’s new development boss is talking like we’re about to get a third attempt at an electric Audi supercar.
Audi’s Peter Mertens, the same guy who blamed the catastrophic failure of diesel on American consumers and not the dozens of Audi and VW employees implicated in the global Dieselgate scandal that engineered emissions cheating for nearly a decade, is now saying the company is ready for another swipe at an electric supercar, via Autocar.
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Here’s the quote from Mertens to Autocar:
“The question is ‘would I like to make it happen soon?’ and the answer is yes, of course,” he said. “For a brand like Audi, a supercar is always interesting and it’s a segment in which we have been playing. We have been a very serious player.”
The first manifestation of the R8 e-tron was a concept that was almost indistinguishable from the normal R8, which only got as far as the third Iron Man movie. The second R8 e-tron was introduced alongside the refreshed R8 lineup in 2015 and actually went into production.
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What’s surprising about bringing up a third version of an electric Audi supercar is that the 2015 R8 e-tron ended production less than two years after going on sale, failing to reach its full limited production run of 100 cars.
Autocar also alluded that any upcoming electric supercar may not be based on the R8, but instead a unique design. Mertens also brought up collaborating with Porsche on high-speed electric technology for such a car.
Considering the performance of the limited current crop of electric sports cars, I will always welcome another edition from a legacy automaker. It’s just interesting how long it’s seemingly taking Audi to nail it.
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