Audi is working on one last blast for the V10-powered R8

Sunday, 19 December 2021

Audi's stunning new concept car is an all-electric roadster with an adjustable wheelbase.

Audi is working on one final hurrah for the R8 supercar, before the mighty V10 makes way for electrification.

According to Top Gear, at the launch of the new R8 Performance RWD, the boss of the RS division said we haven't seen the end of this generation of R8 just yet.

“What I can say is that we have plans to do more,” said RS head, Sebastian Grams. “There will definitely be more [cars] to come on this generation of R8 platform. And as you can see from the R8 with rear-wheel drive we are trying to bring ‘fun-to-drive’ to the front [of what we do].

The R8 supercar is bowing out soon, and Audi wants to give it a proper sendoff.

“What we are doing is trying to make the most out of the [car’s] life cycle. At the moment people are enjoying the R8 and we have a lot of sales. But I can tell you we have enough ideas for the future.”

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Apparently, the future 911 GT3 competitor could bring back the GT suffix, which signed off the last generation R10 as a limited-run special edition.

That car benefitted from a 100kg weight reduction, a power bump in its V10 engine, and extra bits on the body like a fixed rear wing, front bumper winglets and special GT badging.

The first-generation R8 culminated in the ultra-special Competition, which had yet more power, a racier dual-clutch transmission, carbon-ceramic brakes, a sports exhaust, and carbon fibre versions of the rear spoiler, mirror housings, side blades, front spoiler and rear diffuser.

This time around, the final R8 could be based around the all-wheel drive quattro model, or the new rear-wheel drive version. Considering it shares an engine with the Lamborghini Huracan, expect power to nudge the 450kW mark, as that is what the Huracan Evo RWD produces.

Rumour has it, we’ll see it in the second half of 2022. After which, the R8 will disappear for a bit before returning with an all-electric powertrain.

Grams confirmed to Top Gear that should Audi decide it needs another supercar, it will be powered by volts, and volts only. No trick hybrid systems here.

Some of you may recall Audi’s 2015 effort at a battery-powered R8, the E8 E-Tron. It had two electric motors making 340kW/920Nm and weighed 1840kg. Needless to say, it wasn’t all that quick and Audi sold fewer than 100 of them. The price tag of a million euros probably didn’t help either.

The new one will apparently balance fun and range, without being insanely overpowered.

“The horsepower and performance [of supercars] is exponentially increasing right now with fully electric supercars”, said Grams. “But I don’t think you need that much power.”

“If you build a lightweight car then you do not need 2000 horsepower to have fun on the road. Physics will always limit the performance you can use even on track. For instance if you have 2500 horsepower or 2000 horsepower, it doesn’t make any difference.”

Audi will probably wait until battery technology is better before committing to a new supercar, if the engineers can convince the accountants and executives to greenlight such a project. It might even resemble the Skysphere concept in the video above.

In the meantime, Audi’s Project Artemis is chugging along nicely, set to come with “a new onboard network and Level 4 autonomous driving.”

The production version will arrive in 2024, with Bentley and Porsche getting their own versions later.