Absolutely electric

At a glance you’d be forgiven for thinking that this was an RS 3 Sedan wearing the RS 3 LMS race armour and contesting one of the various TCR championships. But you’d be wrong.

Although the body is most certainly based on the Audi RS 3 Sedan, and drive for this little beauty is indeed quattro, aside from that, this is a very different beast altogether.

Meet the Schaeffler 4ePerformance concept, an all-electric test car, powered by technology straight from the Formula E Championship and giving a tantalising look at just what this race developed technology can do in a ‘road car’.

Powered by four Formula E drives from the winning ABT Schaeffler FE01 racing car – the basis for world champion Lucas di Grassi’s electric drive from his 2016/2017 championship season. Each drive produces 220kW for a total output of 880kW, equating to an incredible 0 to 200km/h time of less than seven seconds. 

Each individual motor is directly connected to a wheel by means of a spur gear unit, with two motors sharing one gearbox housing and thereby forming an electric twin axle. This architecture enables selective control of drive torque to individual wheels, with power supplied by two batteries with an overall capacity of 64kWh.

The Schaeffler 4ePerformance concept is the embodiment of an idea by Team Audi Sport ABT Schaeffler driver, Lucas di Grassi, and Schaeffler’s Cheif Technical Officer, Prof. Peter Gutzmer, the pair wanting to ‘gain the best possible learning results from Formula E and apply them to volume production’.

“For Schaeffler, this vehicle is a test laboratory on wheels thanks to its free scaling options for the drive power. We have been learning a lot especially in the area of software-based driving dynamics control systems.” says Simon Opel, Director Special Projects Motorsports at Schaeffler. 

Certainly, the applications to high-performance, series production electric vehicles in the near future are exciting to say the least.