What happens when a powertrain supplier for Formula E decides to see how its EV motors would do for road car? This is an Audi RS3 that’s had its 2.5-litre straight-5 turbocharged petrol swapped out for four electric motors and two gearboxes that send 880kW to the road.
It’s called the 4ePerformance, made by Schaeffler, a major sponsor for the Audi Sport ABT Formula E team. Now it might be a bit criminal to rob an RS3 of what arguably is its defining feature, but with that much power as a consolation and a resulting 0-200km/h sprint lasting less than 7 seconds, we’ll all be well-advised to accept that compromise.
Because the architecture of the RS3 isn’t tailored for optimal packaging of the many lithium ion power cells needed for maximum range, the 4ePerformance makes due with a 64kWh capacity, which isn’t bad at all. Schaeffler isn’t boasting any numbers in this respect, unsurprisingly.
The main focus of this project was to see how Formula E type electric powertrain would perform if adapted to a road car. If nothing else, the car that emerges from this exercise would very flawed, but very fast. It is very much a working test mule at this point, with no further plans for production or racing, yet.
We’ve no idea what the situation is inside the 4ePerformance, but we imagine there to be very little of the RS3’s original trim left, replaced with either empty space or shoehorned with as much lightweight material as they could manage.
The novel approach here, and where this high performance EV differs, is that it uses a gearbox to vary the speed of each wheel from the electric motor assigned to each axle, allowing it to mimic torque vectoring and theoretically reach much a much higher than, say, a Tesla Model S P100D.
Because of the spread of batteries between the front and rear of the car as well as the positioning of its quad motors and dual gearboxes, the 4ePerformance should also be very capable in the corners, achieving that coveted 50/50 weight distribution.
Formula E itself is ramping up for a shift, moving to a new format that would not require drivers to swap vehicles mid-race. This has been enabled through the advancement of more energy dense and lighter weight batteries that will be used in the Formula E Generation 2 racers.
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