audi

Racing autonomous cars through the desert is one thing. Racing a driver-less car up the steep, winding paths of the Rocky Mountains at race speeds is quite another, but that’s the goal a team of Stanford graduate students has set for itself, outfitting an Audi TTS named “Shelly” to navigate the Pikes Peak race course wit no one behind the wheel.

A major auto show without concept cars is just a heated parking garage with shrimp cocktail. So with the Frankfurt show's press days underway, Audi revealed a technical study that examines what its R8 sports car might be like if powered by four electric motors. The answer is the E-Tron. Those four motors together produce a modest 313 horsepower, but an astronomical 3,319 pound-feet of torque.

Not all that torque comes on at once, of course. Such a quantity of twisting force -- as much as an M47 Patton tank -- would turn all four tires into rubber vapor at the first throttle stab.

The run-up to the annual 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race is always a nail-biting enterprise for race teams. Naturally, techs are most concerned with assuring cars' ability to sustain the day-night race, which is the ultimate test for GT cars and sportscar prototypes that will wind through the Circuit of the Sarthe -- on a combination of racetrack and public roads -- in Le Mans, Sarthe, France. This year there's an added kink keeping teams up nights. It appears the gods of aerodynamics have been sending LeMans prototype-class racecars into the ether with a cosmic finger flick.

See a cool promotional video put together by Audi, featuring a time-lapse construction of the R10 TDI. Click here