Audi Sport has revealed the monster cousin of the RS GT sports sedan now releasing here.

SYNCHING neatly with New Zealand availability of the first electric Audi RS road car is the parent’s unveiling of what could be the hottest and most exclusive member of that new family.

 Audi’s most recent truly big time motorsport achievements preclude the involvement it has had until recently in Formula E single seater electric car racing. For 15 years from 2000, it contested the 24 Hours of Le Mans, winning 13 times and becoming the first winner with a hybrid powertrain.

Before all that, though, it was a big name in world rallying, earning two manufacturers’ championships and a massive fanbase during the 1980s’ Group B era with the revolutionary all-wheel-drive Quattro, a car that changed the sport forever.

Audi is going back to the dirt again, but for a different purpose. It wants to conquer the most gruelling rally of all, the Paris-Dakar.

The car for the job has just been revealed.

The RS Q e-tron is patently a total beast. The name suggests a confluence of difference flavours found in the showroom: Audi Q models are about off-road, RS is codex for ‘high performance’ and e-tron is, of course, electric.

The model, just unveiled in prototype form, ticks those boxes. But it also stands apart.

While it might in time influence engineering and design of showroom-bound product, don’t expect to buy one as a uber garage mate for $273,500 RS e-tron GT sedan that Audi is just about to start to deliver to Kiwi customers (and is allowing media, this title included, to drive over the next two days).

The RS Q e-tron is 100 percent an Audi Sport product, so is destined for motorsport duty – and, even then, as a works-only product. (So, no selling off in time works cars to privateers, which is how Dannevirke farmer the late Malcolm Stewart got to own an ex Hannu Mikkola 1984 example that’s still proudly NZ-owned).

In many respects, the RS Q e-tron seems as radical as the grand-daddy A2 Quattro of four decades ago.

The prototype seen here has a fascinating and somewhat complex powertrain comprising a pair of 250kW electric motors, one on each axle, charged by charged by a range-extender petrol engine.

The motors and the engine both come with previous motorsport pedigree. The turbocharged 2.0-litre inline-four petrol was used in Audi’s race cars that competed in DTM, the extrovert German sports sedan series, in the 2020 season.

The electric motors are from Audi’s Formula E programme, being the version that ran in this year’s FE07 car.

The setup is good for a combined 500kW – that’s just 60kW than the RS GT road car achieves with a dual motor set-up and no range extender. Owners can be proud.

In the RS Q e-tron, one of the electric motors – or, more specifically, MGUs (for motor generator unit) – is located in the nose section above the axle, along with a battery pack that constitutes 13 modules of 266 cells each (52 kWh and 375 kg).

The petrol engine, fed by a 295-litre fuel tank – this event runs over two weeks and some stages are 800kms’ long - sited behind the driver, connects to a converter, which will recharge the battery together with the energy recovery system.

The other MGU drives the rear axle and is not mechanically connected to the front axle.

The car has a small single-gear gearbox on each axle and the differentials are digital, with the aim of saving weight and space.

The car can also be recharged with a plug and Audi is working with Amaury Sport Organisation, organiser of the Dakar, to find the most sustainable way of charging the car between the stages.

The racer is decent-sized at 4.5 metres long, 2.3m wide and 1.95 high, but it’s the massive intake located on the roof that is one of the most visibly striking elements.

The car weighs more than two tonnes, but that’s not through poor design. The minimum allowed by regulations is 2000kg. It’s built tough and designed to survive the worst this hugely arduous event can throw at it.

Paris-Dakar is notoriously hard on tyres; the Audi carries two spares. Where? They are concealed inside the bodywork, with Audi keen to avoid any aerodynamic losses that could impair the efficiency of the powertrain.

Carlos Sainz – yes, you might remember him from Rally NZ days - and co-driver Lucas Cruz were the first of the project's three driver pairings to get a taste of the prototype at Audi's test track the other day.

Since then Sainz and fellow drivers Mattias Ekstrom and Stephane Peterhansel have taken turns in the sole running example, completing seven days of testing at ‘Area 39’, an off-road facility - owned by former German rally driver Armin Schwarz - in sand, dirt and rain for a total of around 200km. That’s where the images were taken.

How’d it go?

“Our drivers were very happy from the very first minutes in the car, although of course we already have a long to-do list,” says project leader Andreas Roos.

 “But we are looking forward to this enormous challenge; we don't just want to be there, we want to achieve the best possible performance.

"Of course, we are aware that there will be a learning curve with this simply enormous and unique piece of technology and art. It is the most complex racing car we have ever built.”

Audi Sport has acknowledged the big challenges are getting as close to minimum weight as possible, reliability and software.

The car runs state-of-the-art technology and has more than four kilometres of wiring inside. The interplay between all the systems – spanning energy recovery, energy storage and propulsion - must be near-perfect in the extreme conditions of Dakar.

Audi used live telemetry to analyse each and every aspect of the vehicle's behaviour, as well as the safety of its high voltage systems (12, 48 and 800V).

Project managers hope to do “one or two races” before taking the start line of the Dakar Prologue on January 1, 2022.

Said one: “The objective is to finish this first Dakar, everything else will be a gift. But I think we can have some surprises."