Audi achieves first victory for a hybrid vehicle at Le Mans 24 hours race

Audi achieved a technological milestone in motorsport at the 80th running of the famous Le Mans 24 Hours in France when its hybrid drive vehicle, the Audi R18 e-tron quattro, triumphed for the first time. The four competing Audi R18 cars were the quickest and most reliable vehicles and after 24 hours occupied positions one, two, three and five.
June 19, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
RSS2125 Audi achieved a technological milestone in motorsport at the 80th running of the famous Le Mans 24 Hours in France when its hybrid drive vehicle, the Audi R18 e-tron quattro, triumphed for the first time. The four competing Audi R18 cars were the quickest and most reliable vehicles and after 24 hours occupied positions one, two, three and five.

"With the e-tron quattro in combination with ultra-lightweight design, we put a completely new technology on the grid and immediately won with it - this cannot be taken for granted by any means, particularly here at Le Mans,” commented Rupert Stadler, chairman of the board of management of Audi.

Operating at the rear of all four Audi R18 cars was the latest evolution of the compact V6 TDI engine with VTG mono turbocharger that was used at Le Mans for the first time in 2011. The new ultra-light transmission with a carbon fibre housing - a novelty in a Le Mans sports car - held up to the Le Mans endurance test covering a distance of 5,151 kilometres in all four vehicles without any problems.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Transport technology transforming bus stops in Los Angeles
    January 20, 2012
    David Crawford reports on a pioneering blend of transport technology and aesthetic By gaining a design award before installation has even started, the US$6.9 million City of Santa Monica (California)'s Big Blue Bus Shelter and Branding Package has ensured early interest among what it expects to be a new wave of transit riders. The American Institute of Architects' Los Angeles chapter's recently conferred 'Next LA Citation Award for Architecture', given for design excellence in projects as yet unbuilt, comm
    Read More
  • Machine vision offers new solutions to old problems
    October 28, 2014
    The transportation sector is set to benefit from a far wider range of machine vision technology. While machine vision techniques have been applied to traffic management applications for some years, in some areas there can still be a shortage of knowledge about what the technology can offer transportation professionals. The image processing and interpretation functions of machine vision enables control room staff to be immediately alerted to occurrences requiring attention which, in turn, enables each person
    Read More
  • TRW announces next-gen pedestrian protection system
    July 31, 2012
    TRW is announcing its next generation pedestrian protection system (PPS) - a robust and reliable system using a combination of acceleration and pressure sensing technologies to detect a pedestrian impact. "While the auto industry continues its focus on reducing injuries in single and multiple vehicle crashes and reductions in deaths and injuries have been realised in developed markets, pedestrian fatalities continue to increase globally," said Peter Lake, executive vice president of sales and business devel
    Read More
  • Infrastructure and the autonomous vehicle
    December 12, 2014
    Harold Worrall ponders the effect of autonomous vehicles on transportation infrastructure. For the last century the transportation industry has been focused on the supply of infrastructure to support the ever growing fleet of vehicles and the greater number of miles covered by each vehicle. Our focus has been planning, funding, designing, building and maintaining roadways. Politicians, engineers, planners, financial managers … all of us have had this focus. We have experienced demand growth since the first
    Read More

Highlighted Content