Audi Gives Up On R8 E-Tron

(RTTNews) - Luxury car maker Audi has pulled the plug on the production of its all-electric Audi R8 e-Tron, according to a report from Car And Driver.

The Audi R8 e-tron was launched to much fanfare at the 2015 Geneva auto show, however, only under 100 of them have been made. The car was exclusively offered to European customers and had a price tag of one million dollars.

The R8 e-tron was first displayed at the 2009 Frankfurt auto show as a concept car. In 2010, then-R&D chief Michael Dick drove a few laps in it on the 24 Hours of Le Mans course. However, in 2012, R8 e-tron met one of its many stumbling blocks in its short lifetime. Wolfgang Dürheimer, the successor of Michael Dick, canceled the project.

However, later Dürheimer's successor, Ulrich Hackenberg, put R8 e-tron back on track and was launched in at the 2015 Geneva show.

According to reports, Audi had earlier admitted that the e-tron was a low-volume electric car manufactured to analyze about high-performance electric vehicles.