2002 Audi Tt Quattro Alms Edition Coupe 2-door 1.8l on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Audi previews sleek crossover concept ahead of Beijing debut

With the Beijing Motor Show approaching just a couple of weeks down the road, automakers have begun announcing the concept cars they have in store. Nissan has a new sedan concept coming, Lexus will reveal the production NX crossover and Citroën has a tempting sports sedan concept lined up for the Chinese auto expo. And now Audi has hinted at what it has in store.
Revealing only a trio of renderings with no details to accompany them so far, Audi appears to have a new crossover concept in the works. Referred to only as the Audi Showcar Beijing 2014, the brief calls for a five-door crossover with a rather coupe-like roofline, rugged lower body cladding and a flexible cabin with quad bucket seats.
The form bears telltale similarities to the new TT, suggesting that this concept could be a further evolution of the Allroad Shooting Brake concept that Audi revealed in Detroit. If put into production, we could see it wearing the Q4 badge, giving Ingolstadt a rival to the likes of the BMW X4, Porsche Macan and Range Rover Evoque. However, until Audi tells us otherwise, that's all speculation...

Delphi thrilled with results from autonomous car's cross-country trip

In the first trip across the United States ever made by an autonomous car, engineers from Delphi Automotive were surprised to learn that, in some cases, their vehicle behaved a lot like a human driver. "The car was scared of tractor trailers," said Jeff Owens, the company's chief technology officer. "The car edged to the left just a little bit when it would pass trucks, and that was an interesting observation." Engineers made hundreds of notes throughout the drive, as the autonomous car covered 3,400 miles through 15 states en route to a showcase near the New York Auto Show. Overall, company officials said the car performed better than anticipated in a variety of road and weather conditions. In the course of the cross-country drive, drivers actually controlled the car only for about 50 miles, and those cases were limited to on-and-off ramps and the occasional construction zone where lanes were not marked or only sporadically marked. The purpose of the trip was to glean information on how the autonomous car worked in a real-world environment. Google and others have tested autonomous cars and autonomous features in select real-world environments before, but Delphi's adventure was the first to trek into a test with such varied challenges over a nine-day trip that began near the Golden Gate Bridge on March 22. There are some things the engineers have already learned, like the fact the camera systems had the occasional blip when the sun-angle was low. And there are some things to still be learned, as they pour over three terrabytes worth of data from cameras, radar and lidar sensors in the weeks ahead. "It's going to take us a couple weeks to digest all this," Owens said. "But we had all the data from tests. It was time to put this on the road." Built into an Audi SQ5, the vehicle was striking, if only for the fact it looked like a normal car. Many other autonomous vehicles have quirky sensors atop the roof or other features that make them stand out as experiments. Delphi arranged this one to look as much like a normal car as possible, right down to stowing an army of computers under cargo mats, so the rear contained as much trunk space as the production model. If a fellow motorist didn't know where to look -- or take the time to notice the person in the driver's seat didn't have their hands on the wheel -- there was no reason to suspect this was anything other than a regular car.

Will Audi's e-tron SUV's range match the Tesla Model X?

Tesla may soon get some competition from across the Pond when it comes to battery-electric SUV supremacy. Volkswagen's Audi division is preparing an SUV sized between its Q5 and Q7. And the company is suggesting that the model's single-charge range may challenge that of the Model X. Audi's battery-electric SUV, which was first shown off in a concept version at the Frankfort Auto Show in 2015, may start sales as soon as next year. More importantly, the model could have a single-charge range of more than 300 miles, UK's Autocar says, citing an interview with Audi executive Dietmar Voggenreiter. Granted, that estimate is likely for Europe's more generous NEDC cycle, which would put the range at closer to 250 miles by US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards. Still, 250 miles would beat the 200-mile range of the base-model Tesla Model X and would be in spitting distance of the 100D model's 295 miles. What that means for US customers - price, on-sale date, and range - is unclear. Audi spokesperson Amelia Fine-Morrison, in an e-mail to Autoblog, said it was "too soon to confirm the details," and that the automaker would disclose more information closer to the official launch date. Still, Audi has said it looks to have as much of 25 percent of its global offerings be electrified by 2025, so this will likely be a big step towards that goal. Then there's the question of how big the domestic market will be (not to mention how much the Audi SUV EV will cost). During the three months ended Dec. 31, 2016, Tesla delivered a quarterly-record 9,500 Model X vehicles, so there will obviously be high-end demand for an electric SUV from an established brand like Audi. Related Video: