Audi's Q4 e-tron concept previews affordable compact EV

FRANKFURT -- Audi's Q4 e-tron concept previews a future battery-powered car destined to become the automaker's smallest EV.

The concept will be unveiled at the Geneva auto show on March 5. It will be presented as a volume production vehicle in late 2020-early 2021, Audi said in a statement.

The compact car will be Audi's first model underpinned by parent Volkswagen Group's MEB electric-car architecture. It's expected to have a range of 500 km (311 miles).

The Q4 e-tron is intended as an affordable, entry-level EV and is expected to become the automaker's best-selling battery-powered car.

It will join the E-tron SUV, whose first deliveries start next month in Europe. The e-tron has a mixed modular platform based on Audi's MLB Evo architecture for combustion engine cars At the end of this year the edgier e-tron Sportback will arrive in European showrooms.

The Q4 e-tron will be a sister model to the Golf-sized I.D. Neo electric hatchback that VW brand will start selling in Europe next year.

The car will be built alongside the I.D. Neo and a compact EV for the Seat brand at VW's factory in Zwickau factory in Germany, where VW is investing 1.2 billion euros ($1.4 billion)  so it can produce as many as 330,000 EVs a year for the VW, Audi and Seat brands.

Audi will also be showing four plug-in hybrids at Geneva that would all go on sale this year, including a plug-in version of the Q5 SUV. The spokesman declined to comment on the other plug-in debuts, but Audi has said it aims to offer the fuel-saving technology across its core high-end models such as the A7 and Q8 in addition to the Q7 and A8 plug-ins that it had offered in the past.

Future Audi battery-powered cars will use purpose-built EV platforms, including MEB and Porsche’s J1 that will underpin the upcoming flagship e-tron GT sedan. The e-tron GT was shown as a concept study at the Los Angeles auto show in November and is due to go on sale in 2020 as a rival to the Tesla Model S.

A fifth electric model will be sold in China called the Q2 L e-tron.

By 2025, Audi plans to sell 12 full-electric cars. It aims to sell about 800,000 full-electric or plug-in hybrid models a year by that date, a third of its volume.