Audi begins manufacturing the electric motor for the Audi e-tron

Antonio Roncero @roncero_antonio 27 July 2018 2 min.

Audi begins manufacturing the electric motor for the Audi e-tron

Audi has begun series production of the electric motor that will power the Audi e-tron at its Brussels plant.

The “starting gun” was fired on 24 July: the Audi plant in Györ, Hungary, began series production of the electric motors that will power the first electric car from the brand of the four rings, the Audi e-tron, which will reach the market at the end of 2018.

At the Audi plant in Györ, around 9,000 engines are currently manufactured every day, six of them petrol and three diesel, which are supplied to the 32 factories of the Group Volkswagen. Last year, more than 1.9 million engines were manufactured at this plant. Audi has implemented a new line dedicated to the production of electric motors, where some 100 employees already work –a figure that will rise to 130 workers by the end of the year– to manufacture around 400 electric motors a day.

This assembly line follows an innovative modular manufacturing process that allows employees to work on independent production islands. Autonomous vehicles are responsible for transporting the various modules to the corresponding workstations. In addition, alongside the production line, Audi has installed up to three test benches for long-duration testing under continuous load.

Audi’s electric SUV arrives at the end of the year

Let us recall that Audi has already revealed many details of what will be its first fully electric car, the Audi e-tron prototype, an SUV that will be built in Brussels and which, by size, sits between the Audi Q5 and the Audi Q7. It will feature three motors, one on the front axle and two on the rear, delivering around 500 CV in maximum acceleration mode.

The prototype reaches 100 km/h from a standstill in 4.6 seconds, promises a range of more than 400 km under the WLTP cycle, and will feature a high-power charging system that will allow the batteries to be recharged with enough energy to continue a journey in just half an hour. A few months ago, Audi launched a registration form for reserving the Audi e-tron, which allows interested customers to obtain a preferential right to be among the first to receive the electric SUV when deliveries begin in early 2019.