Green Car Advisor

Audi sees "great opportunities" in electric vehicles and will offer battery-electric automobiles with no exhaust emissions within ten years, its top executive told a German weekly.
 
Chairman Rupert Stadler, in an interview with Welt am Sonntag published Sunday, said he expects diesel and battery technology to be a dominate force the automotive market in five to ten years.

"By then we will offer cars without exhaust emissions," Stadler said.

Asked if Audi was trailing domestic rivals Mercedes-Benz and BMW in the development of  batteries to power electric vehicles,  Stadler replied that he wasn't worried, that Audi's research capabilities are larger than those of its competitors.

Moreover, "electric cars offer great opportunities, which we have already seized on," Stadler said -- without elaborating.

Like most automakers, Audi is under pressure to meet increasingly strict emissions standards globally. So far, the luxury unit of Volkswagen has bet heavily on clean diesel technology being an effective way to meet those standards without sacrificing performance.

Audi also is working on hybrids, some of which might be coming to America.

Willibert Schleuter, head of electronics development at Audi, told EE Times last month that "we have hybrid[s] on our road map" and that they "will be available in the foreseeable future," although their success will rest on improving the range of the batteries while decreasing their cost.

"When I worked on my doctorate some 20 years ago, the battery was the main obstacle [for the deployment of such cars] and this has not changed," Schleuter said.

"Today’s batteries have better properties than the lead-acid batteries of those days, but in terms of cruising range they still are far from being comparable to combustion engines -- unless one accepts a dramatic increase in weight."

Scott Doggett, Contributor