- the 2021 audi e-tron gt will look nearly identical to what the automaker showed at the 2018 los angeles auto show.
- the interior will also stay unchanged from what the german automaker showed to the public two years ago.
- the e-tron gt will be unveiled in a few months and will be available in early 2021.
the path from show car to production vehicle is typically a road fraught with compromise. to actually manufacture a car, design elements sometimes have to change, pie-in-the-sky features will likely disappear, and accountants will remind everyone that vehicles are supposed to make money. the result can be disappointing if the end product veers wildly from what was displayed at an auto show. for fans of the audi e-tron gt, though, that's not going to be a problem.
audi head of design marc lichte said in an interview earlier this month that other than adding door handles and removing the glowing emblems, the vehicle first seen at the 2018 los angeles auto show is 99 percent what we'll see in showrooms. that's because what the automaker showed was essentially the production car.
"i took out the e-tron gt, the production car, and we had a look at it. usually, for a show car we put bigger wheels on. we chop down a little bit of the roof, and we make the track a little bit wider. so we stress everything. we took a look at our production cars and said, why should we change this car?" lichte said.
the interior, too, the designer stated, is 95 percent what we'll see on the road. lichte says that the dual display currently in the a8 and a7 will show up in the e-tron gt and the design will continue to be nearly as dramatic as what we've seen in the show car, with driver-centric angles and design lines that start on the hood and extend into the dash itself.
the audi e-tron gt shares the j1 platform with the porsche taycan. that gave the automaker a nice base to design and engineer its own vehicle. going forward, audi and porsche will use the modular premium platform electric (ppe) being developed by audi and porsche. one of the more interesting aspects of that platform is audi's push for automation via its project artemis as it works to take on ev juggernaut tesla.
in the meantime, for those looking forward to the e-tron gt, it will go into production at the beginning of 2021, with an official unveiling to take place ahead of that. for now, audi has covered the e-tron gt in its branded camo even though we know that underneath that giant sticker sits the same electric car we couldn’t get enough of in 2018 at the la show.