What on Earth is Audi doing with E-Tron?

If we take a quick look back in history, we realize that the first timeAudi mentioned the name E-Tron to the public was all the way back in 2009. Back then, the name was applied to an entire concept car, called simply the E-Tron, which was an R8 converted to an electric vehicle with a big battery pack and some powerful electric motors. It was a supercar for the plug-in set, and it went over so well that Tony Stark drove one in Iron Man 3 this year. With that kind of publicity for the marquee E-Tron, it's confusing that the E-Tron name has been applied to a seemingly endless stream of concepts, test vehicles and rumors over the past four years. At least a dozen, by our count.

There was the original R8 E-Tron, an A3 Sportback E-Tron (EV and PHEV versions), the R18 E-Tron Quattroracecar, an all-electric A2 E-Tron concept, an A6 L E-Tron PHEV that was shown off in Beijing and rumors of A4 and Q7 E-Tron Quattros. Then we had the E-Tron spyder concept and the city E-Tron concept, as well as news of an A5 E-Tron Quattro plug-in hybrid. And then there's the A1 E-Tron plug-in hybrid that is being tested in Germany. Got all that?

Audi is finally getting ready to take the E-Tron name out of the movies and the auto show circuit and start putting plug-in cars in customer driveways. As it gears up for the launch of the first E-Tron – the A3 Sportback E-Tron, coming in 2014 – we flew to Berlin to find out what's taken so long, and what's coming next.

Berlin is a city that welcomes alternatives. Leaving aside the city's embrace for different lifestyles and a wide variety of artists, transportation in Germany's capital is certainly "go as you are." Everywhere you go in Mitte (downtown), you see car-sharing vehicles (electric and gas-powered options from companies like BMW's DriveNow and Daimler's Car2Go as well as lots of the Citroen C-Zero, aka the Mitsubishi i-MiEV, fromMulticity). The public transportation network gets my vote for the best in the world. If you're biking through town – and there are bike paths everywhere – the chorus of start-stop engines firing up when a stop light turns green is astonishing. Add in the known European love for diesels and the fact that many vehicles burn autogas (liquefied petroleum gas, or LPG), you can see how Berlin moves in many different ways. The big question of the week, though, was whether Berlin and, of course, the rest of Germany/Europe/the world is ready for plug-in vehicles.

A3 Sportback E-Tron

The A3 Sportback E-Tron can go over 80 mph on pure electric power, and the car is happy to coast, too. This excellent feature means, if you are going fast and take your foot off the accelerator, the car won't immediately apply the regenerative brakes. Technically, higher e-speeds are possible (see: R8 E-Tron), but in order to maintain the A3's battery and overall efficiency, Audi decided to let the TFSI engine kick in if you go faster than 80 mph. Each of the four driving modes also has a "normal" and "sport" operating mode. The upcoming E-Tron is also as connected as anything else on the market, with the ability to talk to Twitter and Facebook, look up local gas prices and, if you bring your own smartphone, dictate text messages. When you're away from the car, you can use that phone to see if a cable is plugged in, the battery state of charge and even where the car is. Forgetful parkers, rejoice.

Audi's answer, finally, is a qualified yes. While you could look at that endless stream of E-Trons as a series of projects that never went anywhere, Michael Baumann, spokesman for the technology and innovations departments at Audi AG, sees it differently. Baumann, who has only been involved with E-Tron since September 2012, said the key is to differentiate between concept cars that are put on a stage somewhere to gauge the reaction of the market and the media, and those that are destined for customers. The R18 E-Tron Quattro, after all, is a racecar that was never intended for sale, but it did win the 24 hours of Le Mans in 2012 and will be trying for a repeat later this month.

"Certainly the A2 that was shown in Frankfurt two years ago was a pure concept car for the moment, but I think the interesting question is where does it all lead to and why did we do these," Baumann said. Indeed, that's exactly what we're interested in.

It turns out, the last four years all lead to the A3 Sportback E-Tron. It's electric, which qualifies it for the E-Tron name since that's how Audi now describes any car that has a plug, similar to how Quattro is applied to an all-wheel-drive Audi, and it has a range extender. That's the qualified part.

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