This issue also brings you the renamed Audi A7 Avant, as well as the new BMW iX4 computer forecast drawn by Schulte.
奥迪A7 Front
A6 Avant??
While people are not yet used to Audi's change of naming, the new name is accelerating towards us. After first being spotted late last year, the A7 Avant recently travelled to Newburgh Loop for a new phase of testing.
This set of photos of the A7 Avant test car was taken on an open road outside Newburgh Loop, and the entire body is covered in camouflage stickers, but we can still try to see the details of its design. The first is that its grille looks flatter and looks more dynamic without being over-the-top. The headlights are smaller and sharper, and they don't have a split design, with vertical air intakes on each side of the bumper.
Overall, the front overhang of the A7 Avant is shorter than that of the current model, while the rear overhang seems to have increased. At the rear, there are continuous taillights and a large exhaust pipe on the left and right.
It is expected that in the next year, the A7 Avant and the A7 Sportback, two variants of the new A7, will arrive successively. The A7 Avant will continue to appeal to consumers with its outstanding practicality, while its driving performance will also be improved, although the weight of the front end will still be higher when looking at the longer front overhang, which will have a detrimental effect on handling agility.
It will be powered by a mild hybrid or a plug-in hybrid system, with the top-of-the-line RS models expected to feature Porsche's plug-in hybrid technology.
下一代奥迪Q8 e-tron
Another masterpiece of PPE platform?
Not long ago, our photographer photographed a mysterious test vehicle in northern Europe where the snow is melting. It's a mule cart based on the Porsche electric Macan, but what is it really like?
We also saw the next generation of all-electric Cayenne mules, which also have Macan bodywork, but the Cayenne mule has more prominent wheel covers and a different front end. We also found that the car had a license plate that started with "IN", meaning it came from Ingolstadt, the headquarters of Audi. It can be assumed that the test car in front of you should belong to the next-generation Audi Q8 e-tron about the size of the Cayenne.
As Audi's first production all-electric model, the current e-tron is quite old, even though it received a facelift in 2022.
At this stage, we don't yet have any insight into the design of the next-generation Q8 e-tron, and it is certain that it will be based on the PPE platform developed by Audi in collaboration with Porsche.
With the help of this high-performance pure electric platform that supports 800 volts, the new Q8 e-tron is expected to achieve qualitative improvements in all aspects such as range, charging speed and power performance.
保时捷纯电动ka me
It will coexist with the fuel version
The next-generation Cayenne will be available in both petrol and all-electric versions, with the recent appearance of the all-electric Cayenne test car perhaps meaning that it will be introduced before the petrol version. It's just that at this stage, it's hard to say whether the two versions of the new Cayenne will share the body design.
The all-electric test vehicle that appeared this time has already been fitted with the headlights of the production version, although the C-pillar area and the lower part of the door are still quite camouflaged. The front and rear bumpers were also covered, only the camouflage sticker was removed in the middle area of the front bumper.
Like the all-electric Macan, the all-electric Cayenne is based on the PPE platform, but the higher-end SUVs obviously have a longer wheelbase and a wider body. At the same time, it will also have torque vectoring technology and four-wheel steering that come with the platform.
The PPE platform uses modular prismatic cells, with a battery capacity of more than 100 kWh on the all-electric Macan, and only more on the longer wheelbase all-electric Cayenne. The car will come out a year after the launch of the larger SUV, codenamed K1, around 2026.
BMW iX4
A new generation of vehicles for a niche market
Next year, BMW's next-generation all-electric platform will finally be ripe, starting with the i3 midsize sedan and iX3 midsize SUV. After these two iconic models, BMW will continue to launch more products on the platform.
According to some internal sources, the iX4, which is based on the new-generation platform, will start production by the end of 2026. And the German cartographer Schulte recently gave us a picture of the car he imagined: it has the serialized front design of the new generation model, and the kidney grille and headlights have been completely evolved. In addition, for an all-electric model, the front end of the iX4 looks long, while the cab occupies a slightly smaller proportion.
The interior of the new-generation concept car
We expect the interior design of this car to be as simple as possible, with a large parallelogram touchscreen as the main unit in the center console, and a large amount of information will be presented by a 3D head-up display.
The new generation platform will also support 800 volts, and the maximum charging power is estimated to exceed 300 kilowatts. At the same time, the module-less battery pack used will increase the volumetric energy density by more than 20% compared with the current BMW products. These technologies will be the magic weapon for the iX3 and iX4 to compete with the Tesla Model Y.
The author of this article is Kick Car Gang Alai