The eagle-eyed amongst you’ll have noticed that the brand new Audi Q6 e-tron did away with numbered variant names like 50 quattro and 55 quattro – its two trim levels are simply called the Q6 e-tron quattro and SQ6 e-tron quattro. That’s by design, as Audi is finally ditching the confusing nomenclature it has endured with since 2017.
In accordance with Auto Express, Ingolstadt’s head of EV sales and product marketing Florian Hauser said the brand is specializing in making it easier for consumers to make their alternative. “After we discuss simplicity we don’t just talk concerning the options and the configuration process, we’re really considering of getting the leanest engine programme for the Q6 which still refers to our customer demands.”
Which means moving forwards, Audi will likely be offering fewer powertrain options to negate the necessity for numbers. As an alternative, you get a alternative within the variety of driven wheels (quattro or non-quattro) and one or two power outputs (Q or S). For example, the regular all-wheel-drive Q6 e-tron bears just the “quattro” badge.
“And if it’s a performance model with quattro, then it’s ‘SQ6.’” said Hauser. “If you happen to take into consideration what’s coming next, after we discuss rear-wheel drive it’s only a Q6. For smaller and greater batteries we could take into consideration a suffix behind the ‘6’ – for instance ‘Performance.’ And so we don’t need the numbers anymore, so we won’t show them.”
Audi had already moved towards ditching the numbered naming scheme with the Q8 e-tron, which didn’t bear the differentiating badge on the tailgate. Nevertheless, the variant names were retained on marketing materials and configurators – until now, that’s. The corporate can be understood to be removing the badges on its internal combustion cars as well, although whether or not this naming scheme will appear elsewhere continues to be being discussed.
The numbered variant names were originally meant to maneuver the corporate away from naming its variants based on engine displacement, and were vaguely based on power outputs. This mirrored the naming scheme utilized by BMW and Mercedes-Benz, which long since distanced themselves from their displacement-based origins (the BMW 320i, 330i and 330e, for instance, are all powered by 2.0 litre engines).
For example, variants with 30 of their name made between 81 and 96 kW (109 and 129 hp); these rose in increments of 5 until the number 70, which was reserved for cars that made greater than 400 kW (536 hp).
As you’ll be able to imagine, this completely arbitrary way of delineating variants weren’t very helpful for buyers making a choice on which model to purchase. Audi had already ditched the system in certain markets like Malaysia – we retained the previous displacement-based naming scheme (like 2.0 TFSI), only using the numbers for EVs just like the Q8 e-tron.
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This Article First Appeared At paultan.org
