quattro goes electric

When you’ve got vast amounts of torque at your disposal you need to be able to deploy it safely – such as with a four-wheel drive transmission. So when Audi introduced its first production electric car, the e-tron SUV in 2018, it naturally came with quattro as standard. However, this all-new generation of electric drive meant the e-tron’s transmission was like no quattro that had ever come before; the torque to each axle was controlled electronically, with the driver able to choose between seven pre-set dynamic profiles.

The move into electric is sign of the times, and also that Audi is not turning its back on the technology that helped differentiate it for so long. As of the end of 2019, 10.5 million quattro-equipped Audis have been produced – including 804,224 examples in 2019 alone, when they made up 45% of all Audis built.

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