Audi cars A1 Sportback

Audi's 2012 A1 Sportback has been revealed today, just hours after images of the new hatch surfaced in the Russian press.

The A1 Sportback enters as a more practical five-door alternative to the three-door model already on sale in Australia. At 3954mm long and riding on a 2469mm wheelbase, the two cars are virtually identical in size.

The five-door benefits from a slightly taller roof however, allowing for better headroom in the rear.
Rather than squeezing three passengers into the light car's rear, the A1 Sportback is fitted with just two seats in the back as standard, making the car a four-seater. A fifth seat will be available as a no-cost option however.

In five-door form, the A1 Sportback weighs in at 1065kg, about 25kg greater than the three-door.
Internationally, the A1 Sportback will be offered with the same engine range that drives the three-door variant, including a frugal 1.2 litre petrol engine (not offered in Australia), two 1.4 litre petrol engines and a 1.6 litre diesel.
A more powerful 105kW diesel will hit the A1 line-up in the middle of next year, giving the diesel A1 a 0-100km/h time of 8.5 seconds and fuel consumption figures of 4.1 l/100km on the combined cycle.

Australia

Audi Australia has confirmed a mid-2012 local debut for the A1 Sportback, with details to be revealed closer to launch.

themotorreport.com.au

Audi R4 Back On The Cards

Reports out of Europe suggest that the e-tron Detroit-inspired "R4" coupe is back on the table, after a potential conflict with the TT was blamed for the project being canned earlier in the year.
According to Britain's Auto Express magazine, Audi is closer than ever to approving development of the so-called R4, which would likely be positioned between the TT range and the brand's R8 hero car.

Don't expect to see it on the road any time soon, however: “if the go-ahead was given today, it would take around three years to put into production,” an unnamed source at Audi was reportedly quoted by Auto Express.
In concept form, the e-tron Detroit Concept is powered by an all-electric drivetrain. While that arrangement hasn't been ruled out (simply because nothing has been ruled in), the report claims that the R4 will utilise a hybrid system made up of a small motor and Audi's 2.5 litre five-cylinder engine.
The brand's quattro all-wheel-drive system could also feature, although it is expected that the hybrid system will see the electric motor powering the rear wheels while the petrol engine takes care of the front wheels.
Unclear however is what platform the new performance car would use. A new mid-engined platform has been suggested (based on the VW BlueSport concept), along with a smaller version of the R8's aluminium spaceframe.

Themotorreport.com

Audi RS5 Cabriolet - Spy shots

After seeing first patent drawings of the upcoming Audi RS5 Convertible, the car has finally been caught testing in Nurburgring. Spy images showed a larger front spoiler, larger brakes and wider fenders. In the back, however, remains S5 business as usual, narrower rear fender and S-type quad exhaust pipes. The model also will have new LED lights, a larger diffuser and a rear spoiler that automatically extends to 74.56 mph.

As with the coupe, the convertible version uses a standard 4.2-liter V8 engine, with a total of 450 hp at 8,250 rpm and maximum torque of 317.15 pounds-feet available between 4000 and 6,000 rpm. The acceleration from 0 to 60 mph in 4.6 seconds will, while the top speed is limited to 155 mph. The maximum speed can be increased to more than 170 mph on request.

Autoneus.com

2012 Audi RS5

The Audi RS5 goes to the U.S. market, so we already know, but in order to prepare for your trip, Audi has decided to give a little review. The 2012 Audi RS5 turned to our side of the lake with a few exterior modifications and an updated interior, but the power will still come from motor sport coupe V8.


Cosmetic surgery is not so surprising considering RS5 younger brother - the Audi A5 - received their own little changes for model year 2012.

The facelifted RS5 has received several new accents, keen to clear his image, although at first glance, these changes may not be so obvious. The two most noteworthy are the new units grille frame with beveled top corners, and standard, plus xenon headlights with a more modern form, framed by narrow strips of LED daytime running lights. Inside the RS5, Audi has dropped in the front racing style.

Source : Topspeed.com 

Autoneus.com

Cars Audi A2 With the electric-only powertrain

Audi A2 looks very interesting and riveting. With the electric-only powertrain of the A2 concept, Audi is offering another peek into the future of electric mobility at the 64th International Motor Show (IAA) in Frankfurt. The technical study features a classic, premium-standard space concept that offers plenty of room for four people.

The Audi A2 concept is just 3.80 meters (12.47 ft) long, 1.69 meters (5.54 ft) wide and 1.49 meters (4.89 ft) high; even so, it makes an elegant, powerful and sporty impression on the street. Its clean appearance concentrates on the essentials; all details are subtle but shaped for visual impact. The dark glass roof of the white-painted show car switches to transparency with the push of a button.
With its headlights, Audi is presenting the next phase in LED technology, known as matrix beam. A package of LEDs and microreflectors generate a high-resolution and non-glaring high-beam light. Delicate daytime running light fibers frame the highly efficient LED low-beam light module. Intelligent tail lights adapt their illumination to the visibility conditions. The rear fog light, produced by laser diodes, is seen as a beam of light in fog and projects a red triangle onto the road as a warning.
The dynamic light runs below the edge of the window from the front to the rear of the Audi A2 concept - a band of light that contains a multitude of innovative, dynamic light functions. Integrated approach sensors detect the owner and unlock the doors via gesture control. While driving, the dynamic light functions as a continuous side marker light. If the car's indicator is activated, light impulses run throughout the entire band of light.

In addition, a red bar of light flows forward from the tail lights when braking and demonstrates the strength of the brakes intuitively for other road users.
The dynamic light is also located in the cockpit area of the show car, structured in two separate arches. Like the entire interior, the dash panel has a light and clean look and intuitive controls. The driver manages many important features via touch-control areas on the inside of the steering wheel. All driving function use by-wire technology. Components such as the steering or brakes, for example, are actuated purely electrically. Two additional control surfaces fold up at the driver's right when starting the vehicle. An open profile serves as the steering column; a seven-inch display and two secondary displays are located at its end.
The Audi A2 concept has a flat interior floorboard. The center console is attached to the driver's seat; the rear console extends forward between the two rear seats. The four individual seats add lightness, and there is storage space under the fold-up seat cushions. There is room between the rear seats for a city bicycle with its front wheel removed. The load area has two levels; a frame with functional nets creates the upper level.

The colors and materials in the interior support the impression of lightness and functionality. The large areas from the door top shoulders to the floor bear a new and innovative covering material made of polyurethane with a neoprene surface feel; a ribbed material made from recycled polyester covers the central floor area. The seat shells are made with a plastic blow molding technique. Aluminum elements create highlights the cockpit.

Source : Netcarshow.com

2011 Audi R8 4.2 FSI Spyder Manual - Road Test

Audi R8 is satisfying the rider, because while doing his first test drive is very satisfying.
Public reaction seldom factors into our vehicle reviews, but the response this R8 Spyder elicited was hard to ignore, and it was not only plentiful but uniformly positive.

As friendly and approachable as we tend to be—look at that handsome guy in the convertible, they must think—people don’t often toss out unsolicited opinions. But with this R8, smiles and thumbs up abounded; it was the ice-cream-truck effect
with a better soundtrack.

 




PRICE AS TESTED:
$159,950 (base price: $131,950)

TEST RESULTS:
Zero to 60 mph: 4.3 sec
Zero to 100 mph: 10.7 sec
Zero to 130 mph: 18.9 sec
Zero to 150 mph: 28.3 sec
Street start, 5–60 mph: 4.9 sec
Top gear, 30–50 mph: 7.8 sec
Top gear, 50–70 mph: 7.2 sec
Standing ¼-mile: 12.8 sec @ 110 mph
Top speed (governor limited): 186 mph
Braking, 70–0 mph: 156 ft
Roadholding, 300-ft-dia skidpad: 0.93 g

Source : Caranddriver.com

2 variant Audi A7 3.0T Quattro vs Mercedes-Benz CLS550

If we take a Darwinian view, the automotive world until very recently broke down into the following species: sedan, coupe, wagon, truck, minivan, SUV, and Pontiac Aztek. But evolution never stops its relentless churn, especially when it is believed that gold lies in the (sometimes invisible) fissures between these established groups.
Thus did Mercedes-Benz introduce the oxymoronic notion of the “four-door coupe” in 2004 with the original CLS. This attack of automotive arrhythmia was a play for buyers who want sex-kitten styling but indemnity against the inconvenience of extra passengers. The CLS was—and still is, headed into this new 2012 model—a sedan as surely as a platypus is an Ornithorhynchus anatinus. But it has an alluringly tapered roof and a back seat that has, much like the human tailbone, shriveled in the expectation of reduced importance.

 







In its best year, the CLS only pulled in about 14,000 U.S. sales, a fraction of the business rung up by the mainstay E-class on which it is based. Still, where one German brand goes sniffing for more volume, others instinctively follow. Volkswagen now has its Passat-based CC; Audi has launched four-door coupe-y versions of the A4 and A6 called the A5 Sportback (for Europe only) and the new A7; and latecomer BMW is arriving for the second act with its own car based on the Concept Gran Coupé showmobile of 2010.
Audi’s approach is perhaps the riskiest. Defying the notion that a hatchback equals death in this market, the luxurious A7 rolls four seats, five doors, and 25 cubic feet of cargo space into a slant-back fuselage reminiscent of a 1940s streamliner. The dimensions are within a few whiskers of the CLS’s, but compared with the Benz, the A7 swings for the cheaper seats with a $60,125 base price. The CLS starts at $72,175. One obvious reason is the power; Audi fits a supercharged 3.0-liter V-6 with a nowadays tame 310 horsepower—the S4’s engine less 23 ponies—to the CLS’s mighty twin-turbo V-8.
Three levels of A7 are offered, this one being the middle Premium Plus, which, for $3620, includes navigation, 19-inch wheels (ours had 20s and a sport suspension for another $1500), parking sensors, HD radio, a color driver-information display, and so forth. Option your heart out, but you can’t get the S4’s torque-vectoring differential, no doubt being held in reserve for the forthcoming S7.

 







Against an onslaught of new competition, Mercedes stands firm on its original formula. Unwrapped last year in Paris, the 2012 CLS is much like its predecessor, with only marginal gains in dimensions but some fascinating new details. The CLS550 pictured here in a sort of metallic molé hue called Cuprite Brown has the new “Blue Efficiency” M278 twin-turbo and direct-injected (and four cams, and 32 valves, and variable intake- and exhaust-valve timing) V-8, displacing 4.7 liters in yet another blow to the old Benz tail-numbering system.
It makes 402 horsepower and 443 pound-feet of torque, more than enough to make a 4158-pound car feel quick. It also returns better fuel economy than the old 5.5-liter and liberates the CLS from a $1300 gas-guzzler penalty. The roofline has been re-arched to help people access the rear seats without bonking their heads; and with the optional Premium pack, all exterior illumination is done via LEDs, with 71 individual points of light in each of the front headlamp clusters alone.
The Benz’s a la carte pricing plus a couple of heavy options—including the $4390 Premium package (rearview camera, power rear sunshades, power trunk, full LED headlamps, keyless start, heated/cooled front seats, etc.) and the $2950 Driver Assistance package (radar cruise control, blind-spot and lane-departure warning and intervention systems)—push the price to $83,095, That includes 19-inch wheels and summer tires for $500.
Source : caranddriver.com

Cars Audi Urban Concept

Audi is to be commended for avoiding the use of the word “mobility” in describing the Frankfurt-bound Urban concept. That oft-employed term has a way of reducing motoring to a means of getting from place to place, something with which the final portion of this publication’s title conflicts. Audi’s latest future-car vision promises to continue to involve the driver in the process, but do it in a smaller, lighter, more maneuverable way. And it’s electric, of course.Audi bills the Urban concept as “a completely new kind of concept car,” but it brings to mind other hyper-efficient VW pods from the recent past, namely the Up!, as well as the L1 and XL1 “1-Liter” cars. Those and the Messerschmitt KR200.

In this Audi, two passengers sit in a fighter-jet-looking cockpit, complete with a rollback canopy in place of doors. The chassis is made of carbon fiber, into which the seat buckets are molded; the steering wheel and pedals adjust to the driver. The seats are staggered, as in the XL1, to afford a little more shoulder room in the narrow vehicle. Twenty-one inch wheels stick out from the body and are covered by cycle fenders with built-in LEDs.

Unlike the turbo-diesel 1-Liter concepts, the Urban deals in Audi’s not-yet-realized electric promise. The vehicle itself isn’t billed as an e-tron (it doesn’t quite have the stun factor of the early e-tron concepts), but it does employ two electric motors that carry that branding. A lithium-ion battery pack serves as the power supply.

While we like what we hear so far, we haven’t been told too much about this concept. Audi will wait until the Frankfurt show in September to fully unveil the car and share more details. Here’s hoping the “M-word” doesn’t come up at the press conference. Source : Caranddriver.com

Cars Audi A6 Hybrid

Does driving a hybrid change a person? We’d rather leave that question unanswered, but driving a hybrid does change your driving style. All of a sudden, even the leadfeet around here shift their attention to the energy flow charts blinking in the instrument cluster, we don’t plot to pass every car in sight, and we make real attempts to maximize fuel economy and battery recharging. Well, at least for a few minutes.

So it was with this A6, with which Audi is returning to the world of hybridized cars. This writer remembers the presentation of the A4 Avant–based Duo in Berlin some 15 years ago. The diesel/electric A4 Duo hybrid worked well enough, but it lagged far behind Audi’s nonhybrid offerings in overall goodness, and that conspired with a high price to kill it off rather quickly. Expect Audi hybrids to stick around much longer now, though, as the company developed its current gasoline/electric system to work across several vehicle lines. What’s in the A6 is the same powertrain that is offered in the European Q5 hybrid—we’ll get a diesel version of the crossover in lieu of that one—and the forthcoming A8 hybrid’s version of the system won’t vary by much.
Improvements Rather than Breakthroughs
The A6 hybrid comes as a sedan only, since markets that favor hybrids and those that favor station wagons seem to be mutually exclusive. The car we drove was European spec, but the hybrid will indeed be offered in the U.S. It will differ only slightly once it goes on sale here in 2012. The powertrain is the same on either continent: a 211-hp, 2.0-liter turbo four-cylinder mated with a 54-hp electric motor. The combined system output is 245 hp. Compared with other hybrid models on the market, the A6 hybrid doesn’t provide major breakthroughs. Its all-electric range is a minimal 1.9 miles at city speeds, but the car can get to 62 mph on battery power alone before the internal-combustion engine kicks in if you treat the accelerator (very) gently. The A6 hybrid feels neither quick nor particularly slow. Audi predicts a run to 60 mph in just over seven seconds, and we figure that’s about right. Audi claims a top speed of 148 mph.

 







Power is routed exclusively to the front wheels through an eight-speed automatic. The automatic’s torque converter is replaced by an electric motor, however, and coupling and decoupling of the engine from the drivetrain are mostly—but not always—smooth affairs. The four-banger is audible, but effective sound insulation keeps the noise down. There is no tachometer; it’s been replaced by a "power meter" that shows how much precious electricity you’re discharging (or recouping). As with other hybrids, the batteries—a lithium-ion pack with a capacity of 1.3 kilowatt-hours and a weight of 81 pounds—recharge when you lift off the accelerator and when you lightly apply the brakes, at which point the car uses the electric motor as a generator and to slow the car. The hydraulic braking system is activated only during heavy braking. We found the feel of the regenerative braking to be highly artificial and difficult to modulate. Even when you touch the brake pedal gently, the braking force is relatively strong and appears suddenly, a characteristic we thought had finally been banished from hybriddom.
Of course, efficiency is the point of this car, and the Audi A6 hybrid is rated to return 37 mpg combined in the optimistic European test cycle. We even managed to get very close to that figure—according to the car’s readout—in real-world conditions, which, we will admit, made us feel like a better person. For a little while, anyway. Then we decided to flog the car like we would a regular A6, at which point we managed to almost halve the car’s indicated mileage.
The A6 hybrid is considerably heavier than the regular A6—about 200 pounds beefier by our estimation. That weight does make it clumsier than a nonhybrid four-cylinder A6. Although the steering is light and precise, the damping is rather soft, and the tires begin to squeal early. It doesn’t take that much to reach the limits of adhesion in this A6, and the contrast between the A6 hybrid and, say, a conventionally powered A6 with Quattro all-wheel drive is severe. In true hybrid fashion, this Audi doesn’t like to dance. We do, and no matter how many hybrids we drive, that’s never going to change.

Source : Caranddriver.com

Bluebird GTL Formula E Racing Concept

For those that are unaware, the FIA is still organizing and developing the Formula E racing series, which it almost the exact same racing as Formula 1, minus the vroom-vroom of the internal combustion engines. This series uses only cars that utilize sustainable energy, which means no gasoline or diesel, just the ominous hum of an electric motor.

The series is loosely set to kick off in 2014 and manufacturers have started coming forward with cars for the series. This latest car is pretty wild, to say the least. It looks almost like a Le Mans prototype car and the Batmobile had a wild night in the Batcave and the Bluebird GTL Formula E racing concept was the end result.

It takes most of its styling cues from the closed-cockpit-style Le Mans cars that have no rearward window, which wasAudi’s reasoning for replacing the rearview mirror. It is very obvious that the focal point in building this machine was aerodynamics, as the curves are plentiful and there are no visual flat spots to catch the air.

According to its developers, the pictured model is purely just a prototype that they are using for wind tunnel testing and there is no motor information available yet. They anticipate a track-ready model to be completed by the end of September in hopes of racing in the Formula E’s debut season – if one ever kicks off.

We will keep you updated on this newest addition to the Formula E series and let you know the second its manufacturer releases some performance specs. via topspeed