Audi R8 e-tron: Killed off before it launches?

It’s being reported that the electric Audi R8 e-tron is close to being killed off before production starts, as Audi question its viability.

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The electric R8 – the Audi R8 e-tron – arrived in a fanfare of electric car evangelism at the 2009 Frankfurt Motor Show – complete with outrageous claims for its power and torque – and has been ‘on the way to a showroom near you’ ever since.

But it now looks like Audi has finally woken up and seen the light and they have put the R8 e-tron plans on hold indefinitely as they realise there is just no market for an electric car, never mind an electric supercar.

Car and Driver are reporting that Audi’s new head of R&D – Wolfgang Dürheime – has halted all work on the R8 e-tron and it seems highly likely the project will be scrapped altogether.

It seems Herr Dürheime is concerned that the cost of the batteries for the R8 e-tron is prohibitively high, the weight is too great and the range too woeful to make the e-tron viable. Which we could have told him three years ago.

Still, with car makers like Hyundai and Toyota already declaring the electric car is dead (not that it’s ever really lived) perhaps Audi’s seeing of the light finally signals the end of the EV fantasy and the start of a real move in more sensible fuel saving directions.

Now we just need to see the silly EV grant scrapped and the funding put towards subsidising cars that are truly low polluting.