AUDI famously dominated the world of rally racing in the 1980s when it introduced Quattro all-wheel-drive and was the team to beat at the 24 Hours of Le Mans for the better half of the last two decades.

Now, the team from Germany is setting its sights on Dakar, arguably the toughest race in the world. Starting in 2022, Audi will enter the all-new RS Q e-Tron in the two-week off-road race attempting a world-first: Compete for overall victory, using an electrified powertrain.

While the exterior design is wild enough to garner headlines, the way the RS Q e-Tron sends power to all four wheels is truly groundbreaking. Dakar is unlike any other motorsport event on the calendar. It lasts two weeks and teams that last that long can expect to cover 800 kilometers each day. Given that the race is in the middle of the desert and decidedly lacking in conventional charge points, Audi got creative.

The RS Q e-Tron’s front and rear axles are both fitted with a motor-generator unit (MGU), borrowed from the current Audi e-Tron FE07 Formula E car. Additionally, there’s a third MGU that’s part of an energy converter that helps recharge the high-voltage battery during the race. However, all of that alone still isn’t enough to keep the batteries juiced. To bridge the gap, Audi borrowed a 610 horsepower turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine from the Audi DTM car which will act as an onboard generator, keeping the batteries alive.

And if that isn’t impressive enough as far as engineering goes, the timeline on which it came to fruition is unheard of for something of this magnitude. “This project’s schedule is extremely packed and challenging,” says Andreas Roos, the man responsible for the Dakar project. “Less than 12 months have passed since the project officially started. We had to begin the development while the regulations for alternatively-powered vehicles had not even been finalized yet. And all of the development took place during the pandemic.”

Julius Seebach, managing director of Audi Sport GmbH is very aware of where this project will live in Audi’s history, too. “The Quattro was a game-changer for the World Rally Championship. Audi was the first brand to win the Le Mans 24 Hours with an electrified drivetrain,” said Seebach. “Now, we want to usher in a new era at the Dakar Rally, while testing and further developing our e-Tron technology under extreme conditions.”

Ask any racer who has attempted Dakar, and they’ll tell you even just competing in Dakar is no easy task. Overall victory is herculean and Audi’s past motorsport success doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed at Dakar. That being said, Audi has a knack for showing up to new categories of racing and immediately changing the status quo. We’ll have to wait until January 2022, to see if Audi can keep that reputation up in Dakar.(SD-Agencies)