Audi wins Dakar Rally with an electric drive

Audi has won the Dakar Rally with the electrically powered RS Q e-tron. It was also the first time that a prototype with an electric drive, high-voltage battery and energy converter had triumphed in the world's toughest desert rally.

The Spanish driver Carlos Sainz and his co-driver and navigator Lucas Cruz secured Audi’s first victory in the Dakar Rally after around 7,900 kilometres with a lead of 1:20 hours. The preliminary decision was made on the penultimate leg in the Saudi Arabian desert, where the Dakar Rally has been held for several years: Sainz/Cruz’s closest rival, multiple world rally champion Sebastien Loeb in a conventionally powered BRX Hunter, lost a lot of time due to suspension damage. Sainz and Cruz’s Audi was spared such defects, which is why they were able to win by such a large margin in the end.

Their car is the Audi RS Q e-tron, which was presented for the first time in 2021. The all-wheel drive of the Dakar prototype is purely electric and uses advanced electric motors from Audi’s previous Formula E racing cars. Nevertheless, the RS Q e-tron is a hybrid racing car: although the electric motors are supplied with energy by a high-voltage battery, the energy content of the batteries is not sufficient for the long and fast desert stages of the Dakar race. The timed daily stages at race pace were often more than 400 kilometres long, plus transfer runs.

For this reason, a 2.0-litre combustion engine is still installed, which was previously used in the DTM racing cars from Ingolstadt. As the combustion engine, known as an “energy converter” is powered by “residual fuel-based reFuel,” 60 per cent of CO2 emissions are to be saved compared to conventional fuels, according to Audi.

Audi therefore actually won the rally in the final year of the three-year Dakar project with the unique drivetrain. In previous years, numerous problems had slowed down the prototypes of the Ingolstadt-based company or had taken them out of the race completely. These were not exclusively problems with the highly complex drive unit, but also with other aspects such as the chassis. As a result, Audi has continued to develop the car significantly every year, meaning that the winning car from 2024 only has basic features in common with the version presented in 2021.

“Congratulations to Team Audi Sport on winning the Dakar Rally,” says Audi CEO Gernot Döllner. “Audi has once again set a milestone in motorsport. Winning the world’s toughest desert rally with an electrified drive is a visible ‘Vorsprung durch Technik’ and points the way to our electric future.”

audi-mediacenter.com