Audi E-Tron Concept

Cars are now powered by electric or should I say some cars. With electric running a car some may wonder of mileages and may be speed as well.

Official press release
Most important, the E-Tron is powered by four electric motors rather than a gasoline engine. The pair at the front wheels make 74 lb-ft of torque each, while the two at the rear produce 162 lb-ft each. While the maximum of 313 hp is similar to what we’ve reported before, the overall torque output of 472 lb-ft is significantly less than the 3319 lb-ft Audi initially claimed. Credit the company’s multiplication of torque through the E-Tron’s drivetrain, rather than reporting the motors’ actual output, for the discrepancy.

The four motors each drive one wheel and can be controlled independently, thus offering torque-vectoring functionality. This extra dose of agility is a boon for masking this hand-assembled prototype’s 4400 pounds—the production target weight is just over 3500—which includes the 1040-pound lithium-ion battery unit. Rated at 53 kWh (only 42.4 kWh of which are actually used in order to prolong service life), the battery takes 2.5 hours to charge with a special 400-volt electrical outlet. Figure half to a full day of recharging time at your normal 110-volt household outlet. A full charge will get you about 150 miles on the road, Audi claims.

Audi will launch the E-Tron in 2012 at a price of around $150,000