When in Rome take the Audi e-tron Vision Gran Turismo
Audi is making gaming a reality as it plans to deploy the e-tron Vision Gran Turismo as a taxi during the Formula E races in Italy. The car had first been drawn up for virtual races on Sony’s PlayStation 4 but will hit the real road in Rome this weekend.
It marks Audi’s entry into the Formula E electric racing series. The customers and guests of the brand will be able to drive around the FE city circuits as passengers in the Audi e-tron Vision Gran Turismo starting in Rome on April, 14.
Audi’s pre-production center developed and made the Audi e-tron Vision Gran Turismo a reality within eleven months based on the example from the “Gran Turismo” PlayStation game. The best-selling video game has cult status with gamers and Audi has been working together with Sony and Polyphony Digital, the creators of “Gran Turismo”, for nearly 20 years.
Says Audi’s chief designer Marc Lichte: “Although the design of a virtual vehicle allows much greater freedom and the creation of concepts which are only hard to implement in reality, we did not want to put a purely fictitious concept on wheels. Our aim was a fully functional car. The Audi e-tron Vision Gran Turismo shows that electric mobility at Audi is very emotive. This car incorporates numerous elements of our new design language such as the inverted single frame in the vehicle’s color that will be typical for our new e-tron models.”
While the Vision Gran Turismo is a standalone model, Audi is planning to offer a total of more than 20 electric vehicles by 2025. For the next stage of the transition, a dozen new purely electric models are expected, as well as 8 new PHEVs. The “basic” Audi e-tron for example, will be available as of end of this year starting at 80,000 euros and the car manufacturer also announced a Gran Turismo (GT) version (without the vision) recently.
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