Enlarge / After selling more than 160,000 e-tron SUVs, Audi has given the model a midlife refresh and a new name—the Q8 e-tron. (The one seen here is the SQ8 e-tron Sportback version.) (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

LANZAROTE, SPAIN—The electric vehicle market is still nascent enough that most models are in their first flush of youth. But prevailing wisdom in the industry is that a model should live for about eight years, with a midlife spruce-up or refresh scheduled around year four. Not coincidentally, it's been about four years since Audi started the production of its first electric SUV, the e-tron , and since then, it has gone on to sell more than 160,000. Now the German automaker has a growing range of EVs, and "e-tron" has been converted from a proper noun to an adjective in its corporate lexicon in the same way "quattro" did several decades before. So this midlife refresh includes a name change—e-tron becomes Q8 e-tron, making plain the rather obvious similarities between this EV SUV and the gas-burning Q8.

When I drove the original e-tron in 2018, I found it solid, if a bit unspectacular. It hit most of the right notes in terms of appearance—Audi knows how to design a handsome shape, and its interiors are at the head of the class, if sometimes a little somber. Developed in rather a short amount of time, the e-tron could only manage a relatively mediocre 2.2 miles/kWh (28.2 kWh/100 km) at launch. That was sufficient for a range of more than 200 miles (321 km), but not much more, although a software update in 2021 increased the useable capacity of the 95 kWh battery pack from 83 kWh to 86 kWh.

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  Audi is good at designing handsome SUVs, and the Q8 e-tron is no exception.

Although Audi is still waiting to finalize its EPA numbers ahead of the Q8 e-tron arriving in the US next year, it says it expects the longest-legged version to come in with a range of at least 300 miles (483 km). This will presumably be the lower-drag Sportback , which returns as a body variant.

Enlarge / Danish racing driver Tom Kristensen leads another pair of Audi RS e-tron GTs through the corkscrew corner at Laguna Seca. (credit: Audi)

Call it platform sharing, call it badge engineering, call it what you like—car companies have collaborated with each other to make cars for much of the automobile's history. Sometimes these link-ups happen between companies that might normally be considered rivals: Honda and Rover in the 1980s; the BMW/Toyota project that gave us the new Supra; or perhaps the forthcoming electric vehicle platform-sharing between Ford and Volkswagen or General Motors and Honda .

More often, it occurs among the shared brands of a single OEM—Chrysler Group's K platform in the 1980s is a good example. But few automakers have exploited the advantages of that quite like Volkswagen Group, which builds hundreds of different vehicles across its 10 brands around the world using just a handful of different platforms. The vast majority of these—and we're talking several million cars a year—are built on VW Group's MQB platform, which can give rise to anything from an Audi A3 to a Volkswagen Transporter van, with cars and crossovers and SUVs of most sizes and shapes.

The RS e-tron GT is a little draggier than the Taycan, with a Cd of 0.24. (credit: Audi)

But even as you go up the price scale, this practice is still widely used. For example, for decades Bentleys were basically Rolls-Royces with a slightly different nose; today, they share platforms with Porsche's Panamera and Cayenne. And it's why the handsome four-door EV in this review wears Audi RS e-tron GT badging yet features very Porsche Taycan-like specifications—a consequence of sharing the same J1 platform.

Enlarge / In-car VR that adapts the content to the car's motion through space is now a thing, thanks to Holoride. (credit: Holoride)

Virtual reality is coming to the passenger seat near you, at least as long as you own an Audi vehicle with the brand's most current operating system, anyway. The Audi spinoff, Holoride , announced this week that it will begin offering the Pioneer Pack for just under $700, which includes an HTC VIVE Flow headset, an 8BitDo Pro 2 Gamepad, and a year-long subscription to the Holoride platform, for those who own a 2023 Audi or newer (with the MIB 3 system). I got a quick taste of the strange in-car VR experience around my neighborhood in Los Angeles and, in spite of a tendency toward motion sickness, managed to play a video game and watch a little bit of Netflix before tapping out.

Like my cohort, who tried the Holoride experience during CES in 2019 , I am not a VR aficionado, though I am fully on board (and regularly use) AR glasses for work; the Nreal AR glasses I use have made a world of difference when I have to bang out 10,000 words in a single day, resulting in a lot less computer fatigue and repetitive motion pain. So, when the engineers from Holoride strapped the HTC Vive Flow headset to my face, it wasn't an unfamiliar sensation, but it was far more visually restrictive than I'm comfortable with, especially in the back seat of a moving vehicle. The team handed me a familiar game controller, and we were off, in spite of my nerves about the possibility of getting ill in mere minutes in the back seat of the BMW X5 that the team was using for demo purposes.

The visuals

When you first strap in, you adjust the eyepieces of the HTC Vive Flow headset the same way you would adjust binocular diopters. I don't wear glasses except when I'm reading or working at the computer but did have a hard time finding a reasonably clear image in the glasses. I don't wear my glasses when I'm wearing the Nreals, but in retrospect, I probably should have used them under the relatively lightweight Holoride headset since the images never really got super clear.

Enlarge / The Audi S1 Hoonitron is inspired by the company's 1987 rally car. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

The last time I wrote about one of rally driver Ken Block's jaw-dropping Gymkhana videos, it was about his trip to the summit of Pike's Peak in a 1,400-hp methanol-fueled 1965 Ford Mustang. Spectacular as it was, I couldn't help but feel it was time for Block to join the EV revolution. That time has now come, as Block released his latest demonstration of automotive acrobatics in Las Vegas on Tuesday. The video's name gives it away: Electrikhana.

Now, you don't just go hooning any old EV around the strip, at least not if you're Ken Block. In this case, his ride is a stunning one-off electric Audi, the S1 Hoonitron, inspired by the 1987 Audi Sport quattro S1 Pikes Peak car.

"Developing a fully electric prototype for the unique requirements of our partner Ken Block was a big and exciting challenge to which the whole team rose with flying colors. It is great to see how ‘Vorsprung durch Technik’ is presented in an all-new environment," said Oliver Hoffman, Audi's board member for technical development.

Enlarge / In a subtle troll at its rival, Audi says this will be the first F1 engine built in Germany for more than a decade. (credit: Audi)

Audi will race in Formula 1 in 2026 with engines built at its Audi Sport factory in Neustadt, Germany. After years of rumors, Friday's announcement was not entirely unexpected; in May then-volkswagen Group CEO Herbert Diess confirmed it would enter the sport in four years when the next set of engine regulations come into effect.

VW Group will actually fund two F1 programs, one with Audi and second with Porsche, which is in the process of acquiring a 50-percent stake in Red Bull Technologies. The Porsche announcement was supposed to take place at Red Bull's home race in Austria in July, but the sport only ratified the 2026 engine rules in mid-August.

That deal may still need some i's dotted and t's crossed , but with the new rules now confirmed, Audi has taken the opportunity of this week's Belgian Grand Prix to reveal its show car, and to formally launch its F1 effort.

Enlarge / The Audi Q4 e-tron is available in two body styles—this is the Sportback variant. (credit: Audi)

LOS ANGELES, CALIF.—When Dieselgate made headlines in 2014, it fundamentally changed how Volkswagen Group and its associated sub-brands, from Volkswagen to Lamborghini, had to think about cars. Diesel got a big black mark, and electric vehicles got a much-needed bump in the race for a more sustainable way to meet the ever-growing demand for personal transportation.

The scandal accelerated Volkswagen’s push to go completely electric by 2033 and encouraged investment in a US network of EV chargers ( which still leave a lot to be desired ), but the rollout of the EVs themselves has been slow, to say the least.

Audi, one of the VW Group’s luxury automakers, has been slowly rolling out a suite of new EVs that began with the e-tron SUV, the e-tron Sportback , and the e-tron GT sport tourer and most recently includes the Q4 e-tron in both typical crossover and Sportback form. The Q4 e-tron was announced in February of 2021 and was originally slated to make its stateside debut in mid- to late-2021.