Audi unveils zero-emission Quattro concept

Audi’s Quattro badge originally became famous in the heady, petrol-spewing days of Group B rally racing, but in the near future it could find itself attached to a car that produces no emissions at all.

That’s if the H-Tron Quattro concept shown off by the German car-maker at the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS), currently underway in Detroit, is anything to go by.

While there’s nothing especially outrageous about the car’s looks, Audi is promising big things with the H-Tron. According to the Ingolstadt-based company, the concept is capable of around 600km on a single tank of hydrogen, will hit 100km/h in under seven seconds, and can refill in just four minutes. Two electric motors on the front and rear axles meanwhile represent a new evolutionary level of quattro drive — the electrified quattro. The electric motor on the front axle develops 90 kW, and its rear counterpart 140 kW.

Inside there are some promising technologies too, some of which might find their way onto the upcoming Audi A8.

According to Audi, the next version of its top-of-the range sedan will include new piloted and self-parking technologies which computes a model of the car’s surroundings in real time and makes this information available to the assistance systems and the piloted driving and parking systems. The latter, Audi says, can assume driving tasks during parking or in stop-and-go traffic on freeways at speeds of up to 60 km/h.