Geneva motor show: Audi concept showcases firm’s new diesel hybrid engine

As has been rumoured and confirmed by official sketches, Audi will show this sleek five-door concept, dubbed the prologue Avant, but it won't have the original coupe's biturbo V8 up front.

Instead, it will use a variant of the diesel-electric plug-in hybrid powertrain from the upcoming Q7 e-tron TDI to deliver 335kW of total system power.

The system mates an all-new Audi V6 turbodiesel with next-generation lithium-ion batteries and an electric motor housed inside the eight-speed automatic transmission.

The plug-in hybrid can stretch out to 54km of pure-electric driving thanks to a powertrain that will be seen in Geneva in the Q7 e-tron TDI and available on sale in the SUV mid-year in Europe.

Its diesel motor contributes up to 260kW of power and, while Audi hasn’t confirmed a torque number, expect it to be somewhere beyond 600Nm. The electric motor chips in with 100kW of power of its own and has somewhere between 350Nm and 380Nm of torque.

The system torque of the combined powertrains adds up to 750Nm - exactly the same as for the prologue coupe, though with an utterly different philosophy.

Audi’s acceleration claims for the Avant are more modest, too, stating the concept car will reach 100km/h in 5.1 seconds (some 1.4 seconds slower than the coupe).

The trade off is in its fuel economy. Even though the extra doors undoubtedly add to the coupe’s 1980kg weight figure, Audi insists it will flit through the NEDC combined fuel economy cycle using just 1.6 litres/100km. That is a long way south of the biturbo V8 coupe’s 8.6 litres/100km and its 43 grams/km means it emits just over 20 percent of the coupe’s 199g/km CO2 output.

The trick to it all is a new-generation of lithium-ion battery pack in the rear, which stores 14.1kW/h of energy and can be recharged by induction in around two and a half hours. Yep, no cables, except for the on-board string just in case you get stuck somewhere without the fancy Audi Wireless Charging (AWC) system.

The AWC system is essentially a floor plate with a primary coil and an AC/AC converter (inverter). It is either embedded in the floor or sitting on top of it, connected to the power grid by cable and when it’s switched on it induces a magnetic field of alternating current. It charges at 3.6kW/h and draws up to 16 Amps.

It will run a similar all-wheel drive system to the prologue coupe, along with its five-link rear suspension and up to five degrees of rear-wheel steering - turning opposite to the front wheels at low speed and in the same direction when the clip’s a bit faster.

The prologue coupe was all about Audi ushering in a new design language, which will first appear in production in next year’s A8, and the prologue Avant is no different.

"With our show car for Geneva, we now translate the design language of the Audi prologue into a new, dynamic and stretched form," Audi's board member for Technical Development, Ulrich Hackenberg, said.

It seems longer and larger than it is, with a stretched roofline, flat D-pillars and huge, powerful, crisp blisters over the wheels that are redolent of the original Ur quattro.

"With the prologue, the prototype meter of our new design language, we have clearly pointed the way in aesthetics," Audi's design chief, Marc Lichte, admitted.

“Now we are going one step further by presenting a concept which combines aesthetics, dynamics and function in a fascinating way,” he claimed.

The Avant has a slightly different single-frame grille from the coupe, reflecting the production grille differences in Audi’s hybrid models compared to its standard models.

The brushed aluminium ribs in the grille are part of the new e-tron signature, but that’s far from the only sign of high technology from the front end of the car.

Audi may have lost the battle to get Laser Lights into production first when BMW trumped it at the last minute with the i8, but it's determined to win the war. Insiders insist Audi will have optional Matrix Laser Lights available in production next year and they'll make their European debut in the prologue Avant.

Much like Matrix LED headlights, the Matrix Lasers decompose the ultra-bright light, which currently sends just two white spots about 600 metres up the road directly in front of the car. The result is a wider light that’s just as bright and, in concert with forward-facing cameras, will block out any blinding glare while lighting up far more road than anything currently on sale.

At 5.11 metres, the Avant is only a handful of millimetres longer than the stretched prologue coupe, even though it seems significantly longer and sits on a 3.4-metre wheelbase (the coupe rides on a 2.75-metre wheelbase).

It’s wider, though, with a 1.97 metre width eclipsing the two-door’s 1854mm and at 1.4 metres, it’s less than 30mm taller.

The car rides on adaptive air suspension, with 22-inch, five-spoke alloy wheels and custom-designed 285/30 R22 rubber beneath it, while its rear-view mirrors are small, sculpted aluminium details.

At the rear, Audi has used three-dimensional LED lights in a strip across the entire (and not inconsiderable) width of the car, while the exhaust emerges from the top halves of two grille-shaped features.

There are no door handles, with the occupants instead touching a sensor inside the window channel strips to activate the electric motors that push the doors wide.

Its dash features a wrap-around high line and the instrument panel is uninterrupted on its way across the cabin. Integrating three touchscreen display panels, it reserves one for driving features, one for media controls and a third sits in front of the passenger to run the entertainment system.

It shares the same four-seat layout as the coupe and the full-width dash layout shares much of its astonishingly precise technical detail, including a bendable OLED touch screen and the ability for the passenger to “swipe” navigational info or music choices across the dash to the driver.

One key feature (which will be in the production A8) is its intelligent cabin software program dubbed “Butler”, which can identify passengers and drivers from their phones. It can make suggestions for music or routes based on the driver’s normal preferences, too.

There’s a development of Audi’s phone box, dubbed Easy Slot, beneath the centre console lids and it can not just charge them, but network all of the smartphones in the car to the infotainment system.

It’s a more luxuriant interior than the minimalist coupe had, clad in richer leather and boasting aluminium trim elements and dark ash wood veneer.

In the rear, the passengers get their own bendable OLED display integrated in the centre console. Its touch-screen is used for changing the seat angle or adjusting the air conditioning or audio or video systems. It stays flat until activated, when it adjusts its angle depending on the backrest angle of the seats.

It also lets rear-seat passengers exchange data with the driver and it also has two narrow OLED tablets mounted to the backrests of the front seats. The detachable tablets can be operated outside the car as well.