Daily Archives: August 29, 2018
Top 3 Things About The 2018 Audi PB18 E-Tron Concept
The prototype for the 2018 Audi PB18 E-Tron concept was revealed at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. The concept car blended both functionality and a dynamic style that’s nothing like we saw in an Audi. The best thing about the E-Tron concept, at least for traditional car enthusiasts, is that there is no hint of autonomous tech assistance here.
Exterior
The exterior design is a mixture of the layout of a coupe, the shape of a hatchback, and the profile of an exotic vehicle. Up front, you might see some similarities with Audi’s current supercar, the R8. The Singleframe grille was made prominent because of its hexagon shape. The headlights are made of ultra-thin units that has laser-high beams and are integrated with digital matrix technology.
The PB18 measures 4.53 meters (14.5 feet) long, 2 meters (6.4 feet) wide, and 1.15 meters (4.6 tall), so it’s not exactly a small car.
Interior
The cabin of the PB18 concept car can either be a two-person layout or a single-passenger layout, the latter will likely put the driver in the middle of the cockpit, much like the Mercedes EQ Silver Arrow concept. The windshield is not just a simple glass. It’s an augmented reality system that displays information about the road ahead. Because of the hatchback layout of the concept car, it actually has quite a reasonable amount of cabin space—16.6 cubic feet to be exact.
Drivetrain
The concept car uses three different electric motors—one in the front axle and two in the rear axle. Each of the electric motors can produce 201 horsepower. Combining all three will amount to a whopping 604 horsepower, which can increase to 671 horsepower and 612 pound-feet of torque during normal driving sessions. There’s a temporary boost that allows the engine to make 764 horsepower, which is enough to help the PB18 accelerate from 0 to 62 mph in just over two seconds.
Examining the Beauty of the Mercedes-Benz Vision EQ Silver Arrow
Mercedes-Benz has plenty of history from which they can pull out a concept so beautiful and ethereal that it can make our eyes water. And that’s exactly what they have done when they pulled back the sheet from the Vision EQ Silver Arrow at the Monterey Car Week in Pebble Beach, California.
The concept is a forward-looking take on the legendary streamliners of the 1930s, particularly the W125 Rekordwagen which set the world record for the highest speed on a public road. It held that record for 79 years until the Koenigsegg Agera RS went 8 mph faster last fall. For added context, the Rekordwagen is scheduled to appear alongside this Vision EQ Silver Arrow concept.
The difference would be what’s under the hood. The W125 made its 275 horsepower from a twin-supercharged 5.6-liter V-12 engine while the Vision EQ Silver Arrow will produce 750 horsepower using two electric motors (one per axle) and an 80kWh battery. The W125 can comfortably exceed 250 miles per hour while the Vision EQ is built to produce 250 miles per charge.
The exterior is made of carbon fiber, and to achieve that Silver Arrow appearance, the top layer of the exterior was painted in Alubeam Silver. This is a reference to the unpainted metal of old cars. The liquid-like finish is matched by the very fluid surfacing. You can find not a single crease on the Vision EQ. The only “imperfections” found on the smooth surface were the place where the top surface meets the unpainted front mask and the protruding side skirts.
The 168-spoke wheels are half-covered and they are painted in “rose gold” to loosely resemble the copper wire inside an electric motor. Since this is a concept car, the wheels are naturally so big it’s almost impossible to imagine what tires could fit them.
According to Mercedes, the Vision EQ Silver Arrow is intended to draw on the brand’s legacy of unmatched acceleration and driving pleasure. It “provides an insight into the future of our design.”
