(Newswire.net — November 29, 2014) — After Tesla successfully launched their futuristic battery-powered Model S, car manufacturing giant Audi announced it wants a share of the ecologic battery-powered cars market. According to Auto Express, Audi is planning to release it’s new electric powered family car in 2017.
“I was able to reengineer the R8 e-tron project and technology with the team and we are on the way to a range of 450km (280 miles),” Audi’s technical development chief Ulrich Hackenberg told Auto Express.
According to Auto Express reporter Jonathan Burn, a new body design is allowing bigger and better batteries to be stored under the floor of the car, providing what a family car needs most, large baggage and passenger space.
In order to achieve 280 miles range, Audi’s all-electric car will use next-generation batteries, Plugin Today reported.
“Audi will be applying lessons learned in the development of the coming R8 E-tron to the future electric car, after it managed to double the range of the electric sports car thanks to new battery technology to 450 kilometers, or 281 miles,” said Jonathon Ramsey, associate editor for the Autoblog.
Audi has created blue prints for a wide range of electric cars to keep competitive with Tesla and other German competitors when the market grows.
Meanwhile, Tesla Motors moved to open its patents to competitors in the spirit of the open source movement. “At Tesla, however, we felt compelled to create patents out of concern that the big car companies would copy our technology and then use their massive manufacturing, sales and marketing power to overwhelm Tesla. We couldn’t have been more wrong.” Tesla CEO, Elon Musk said.
Musk realized Tesla’s true competition is not the possibility of other electric car companies in the market, but rather the “enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world’s factories every day.”
Musk said that the rapidly evolving technology platform of future electric cars would not only help Tesla, and other car manufacturing companies, but the world itself.