We caught our first glimpse of Audi’s biggest debut of the 2014 Detroit Motor Show (NAIAS), the Allroad Shooting Brake, yesterday in a series of leaked pictures. Now we have the official details of the car, coming direct from Audi themselves, confirming the car’s hybrid powertrain and new form of quattro drive.
The Audi Allroad Shooting Brake concept is a compact crossover whose design, it is said, hints at the looks of the new TT sports car. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. The fact is, the Allroad doesn’t look very interesting. In fact this is one of those cases that the technical details of the car are actually more fascinating than it looks.
Audi Allroad Shooting Brake is an e-tron Hybrid with three separate source of power, including a 2.0 TFSI with 292 PS and 380 Nm, a 40 kW and 270 Nm electric motor integrated into the six-speed e-S tronic, and another 85 kW and 270 Nm electric motor mounted on the rear axle. The first electric motor powers the front wheels, along with the TFSI unit, and the second, spins the rear ones. And this is e-tron Quattro four-wheel-drive.
The hybrid system in the Allroad SB sounds overly complicated, and, well, it is. But the benefits such deep sophistication is astounding. The Allroad benefits from a total output of 408 PS of system power and a system torque of 650 Nm. Given the 1,600 kg weight of the car, it is remarkable that it manages to go from 0 to 100 km/h in 4.6 seconds and reach a top speed of 250 km/h (limited). Efficiency numbers are even more amazing than performance: 148.7mpg, a range of 820 km, and CO2 emissions of 45g/km.
As with all clever hybrid powertrains, this one too offers different driving modes including EV, Hybrid and Sport, each basically doing what it says on the tin. They are controlled via a new generation of Audi’s Multimedia Interface. Audi Allroad Shooting Brake’s e-tron powertrain may seem a bit outlandish for now, but in a few years’ time we will be seeing examples of it in production cars. Who knows, maybe the next Audi TT gets a version of it.
