Audi intends Compete in the world’s toughest rally using tram started 15 months ago with a blank sheet of paper. Company closed its old racing division in the late 1980s, and by its own admission, thanks to staff attrition, has lost almost all the knowledge acquired during the period when Audi won the title. World racing champion in both 1982 and 1984.
The Dakar rally is a punishable off-road endurance event of absurd proportions. The distance of each leg can be run up to 900 km (560 miles) per day. The off-road terrain is much tougher than in regular races, so the vehicles have to be built specifically for the mission—only modified off-road vehicles won’t cut.
The race began in December 1977, following an incident in which Thierry Sabine got lost in the Ténéré desert while competing in the 1975 “Cote-Cote” Abidjan-Nice race. During this unintended diversion, he decided that the desert would be a good location to host a regular contest. About 182 cars started the inaugural rally in Paris. Only 74 people crossed the 10,000 km (6,200 mi) route across the Sahara to the Senegalese capital Dakar.
As a result of the pandemic, with the inability to fully test any equipment under track conditions, Audi’s goal in the first year of its return to motorsport was just to finish the Dakar. However, halfway through the event, all three cars were still running and the team even won the third stage 636 km with veteran driver Carlos Sainz, aged 59. “Big surprise most of all. is active,” a spokesperson for the group told WIRED.
At first glance, Audi’s 2022 Dakar rival doesn’t have much in common with your normal family car. The RS Q e-tron is a giant Tonka Toy, 4.5 meters long and two meters high. Underneath the Darth Vader body is a tubular frame, braced with carbon panels and housing the battery, three electric motors and one petrol engine. It’s safe to assume that nothing like it will drive down a street near you.
So why is Audi doing this? That’s part of Dakar’s prestige, of course: Since its inception, the event has been a prelude to adventure and the romance of the desert. After initially running from Paris to Dakar, the event moved to South America in 2008 following a terrorist attack in North Africa. Despite the geographical displacement, the name has remained the same, and in 2019 Dakar moved to Saudi Arabia again, to recall the event’s desert origins. Winning the Dakar is still very prestigious, and 2022 is Audi’s first attempt.
But with that, Audi is determined to be a premium electric brand, and they want to win Dakar on battery power. It’s an incredibly tough challenge, as competitors complete distances of up to 600 miles a day, driving through some of the most remote and extreme landscapes on Earth. They barely see a camel, never mind an EV charger.
But what Audi sees is an opportunity – an opportunity to experiment with an old idea that is making a comeback: the range extender. This is a battery-powered electric car that also has an onboard gasoline engine, which acts as a power source. The engine never drives the wheels, it just keeps the battery full as you drive. Ten years ago, range extenders were “the future”: Vauxhall (Buick in the US) and BMW both offered them, while Audi developed a concept car.
