Audi has revealed a few of the secrets of the upcoming all-electric Q4 e-tron SUV ahead of the car's full reveal in April.
Uses the MEB platform
Well, we say secrets - the new Audi Q4 rides on the same MEB electric car platform as the Volkswagen ID.4, so you can probably infer that its range and performance figures will be roughly similar. While we haven't seen the Q4 e-tron fully undisguised yet, a quick peek behind the camouflage tape shows a car that roughly matches the original Q4 concept, with chunky styling and an especially cliff-faced grille.
Audi is very proud of the Q4's interior and, on this showing, rightly so. It's hugely roomy - in spite of the Q4 being, on the outside, roughly comparable to the existing Audi Q3, the cabin has the kind of space you'd expect from the massive Audi Q7, with acres of rear legroom and stadium-style seating in the back.
What it doesn't have is a seven-seat option. Which seems a little odd, given the popularity of seven-seaters, and the Q4's massive 541-litre boot. Audi says that a dedicated seven-seat electric car is on the way, though. It also lacks the trendy 'frunk' under-bonnet storage area, but Audi says that this is because it has shunted ancillary systems such as the air conditioning unit up front to maximise cabin space.
Biggest touchscreen in an Audi yet
The dash looks, initially, pretty similar to that of the current Audi Q3, but there are some major differences. The centre console juts out like a cliff in Monument Valley, and everything is ringed with a subtle, slim strip of mood lighting. The main touchscreen is vast at 11.6 inches across, making it the biggest screen Audi has yet put into one of its cars.
There's also a rather funky new steering wheel, flattened off at the top and bottom, and which features touch-sensitive haptic pads on the spokes instead of traditional buttons and roller switches.
The star of the interior show, though, is the new head-up display, or HUD. We've become used to HUDs of late. They started, in the seventies, as technology that would allow fighter pilots to keep their eyes up and out of the cockpit, and therefore more able to shoot down enemy planes. The idea in a car is basically similar - project information such as speed and navigation directions onto the windscreen so that the images seem to be hovering somewhere over the bonnet, and the driver can keep their eye up and out on the road, rather than looking down at an instrument panel.
High-tech HUD
Audi is now taking that to the next level, vastly increasing the size of the projection. In fact, thanks to the relationship between the projection and how your eyeballs read it, the HUD in the Q4 appears to be 70 inches across, like the biggest widescreen TV you've ever seen.
So, as well as basic, expected info such as speed and road signs, Audi can project more. Like a navigation direction graphic - a series of bright blue chevrons - that seems to hover in the road ahead, like a drone, pointing you down the right turning, or picking out your final destination.
The HUD can also keep an eye on other traffic around you, warning you with little red or green lines if you're too close to the car in front, and even predicting where other cars are going to go next, by reading the car's 'body language.'
Responding to questions that all this extra projected info might be too distracting, the Audi engineers in charge of the project say that the exact opposite is their goal: "The data itself is chosen to be contextual and situational. So actually we don't want to overload the driver with a lot of information. The meaning of augmented reality and the use of it is to show the information you need, when you need it. And this is exactly what we're doing."
We'll have more info on the Q4 e-tron next month, when Audi shows us the rest of the car, and sales will start in the summer of 2021.