The masterpiece: the Audi e-tron GT

There is no ten-cylinder engine restricting the cabin. Instead, small electric motors on the axles permit an interior with abundant space for four passengers. The agility and surprising acceleration of the electric drive is combined with a high range, which also benefits from excellent aerodynamics. The absence of a combustion engine enables proportions that produce an exciting design.

The result is a fully electric, four-door, driver-focused Gran Turismo with high-performance handling characteristics. “The Audi e-tron GT is the best example of how utterly contradictory requirements drive us further forward than we had ever imagined in our wildest dreams,” adds Durst.

Every one-thousandth degree of improvement in the aerodynamics can extend the range. That is because aerodynamic drag is often the dominant component of road resistance for an electric vehicle when driven by the customer. At speeds beyond about 100 km/h, it already accounts for roughly half of total road resistance. At a steady 140 km/h, aerodynamic drag approximately doubles. That inflates energy consumption by around 50 percent.

“We’ve realized a raft of measures to manage the aerodynamics optimally on the Audi e-tron GT. First, the closable side cooling air inlets are a very important aerodynamic feature of the forward structure,” emphasizes Islam. “The louver system on these air inlets is controlled electronically and regulates automatically how much cooling air the vehicle needs. Depending on the driving profile, the louvers remain closed for much of the journey – that keeps the drag coefficient as low as possible.”

The Audi e-tron GT is the first series-production vehicle to display all the traits that Marc Lichte and his team define as the Audi e-design of the future. Such as the optically inverted Singleframe, which is finished in the body color with a dark surround. It declares from far off: This is an Audi. And – it is electric. Or take the expressive sill design, which very clearly indicates that this vehicle’s nerve center is no longer the engine under the hood, it is the battery beneath the floor. And above all the deep shoulder line, which instead of following the time-honored principle of continuing at one level is now interrupted in the middle, and uses soft lines to accentuate the muscles that define the vehicle silhouette at the front and rear – the so-called quattro muscles. Marc Lichte continues: “These wheel arches. These two muscles. That, for me, is Audi.”

The fact that Lichte’s dream has become a reality specifically with the Audi e-tron GT, one of the most aerodynamic – and therefore efficient – Audi models of all time, highlights his expectations of every Audi: “A good design combines high aesthetic value with perfect function.” And as if he can barely believe it himself, Marc Lichte takes another walk around the Audi e-tron GT in the studio hall, stops, smiles and says quietly to himself: “The masterpiece.”