From one extreme to another. Last week, rally driver, Ken Block, took his ‘company car’ Audi RS e-tron GT to Laguna Seca to see how the all-electric grand tourer handled the track and the fabled ‘corkscrew’. Now, heading back to his base in Utah, he swaps the electric GT for what he deems a more appropriate daily driver from Audi, better suited to the diverse conditions he encounters on a regular basis.

From the snow in the mountains, right down to the desert floor, Utah in general, and Block’s lifestyle calls for a vehicle suited to differing road conditions and in true Block style – no road at all.

“This is all their [Audi’s] technology coming into one unit that can be used for everything,” says Block of the Audi e-tron SUV.

“The GT [RS e-tron GT] is very specific,” he says, referencing his recent stint at Laguna Seca Raceway, “but with this [Audi e-tron] I want to climb mountains, I want to go through the snow, I want to go through the desert, and that’s the package we’ve put together on this – something that my wife and my kids can use quite easily and that I can use … with the bike rack to go down to somewhere like Moab to go mountain biking. It’s a complete package,” he says.

Aside from the roof rack to carry mountain bikes and other sporting equipment, Block and his team fitted a rear wheel rack and less obviously, a subtle wrap with a white and grey camouflage design. Wheels too have been changed, and while the Audi e-tron can accommodate wheels up to 22-inches, for his particular requirements, Bloc has opted for a smaller wheel largely because of the bigger sidewall and the flexibility that allows for going offer road and varying tyre pressures to suit different applications.

It’s fair to say that Ken Block’s idea of ‘different situations’ are significantly different to most people’s – something that will be revealed when he takes Neil Cole For a ‘proper’ ride in the newly upgraded Audi e-tron in the next episode of his ‘Electric Fleet’ series next week.