Audi shares upgrades to off-road RS Q e-tron ahead of its third outing in the brutal Dakar Rally
In January 2024, Audi will take on the super tough Dakar desert rally for a third time, bringing with it an upgraded version of its RS Q e-tron prototype. Audi says this year’s fully-electric, off-road e-tron is safer, more reliable, more comfortable, and even a tad lighter. Can it take the podium in the desert this go around?
Audi first joined the 2022 Dakar Rally – which is an off-road endurance event held each year since 1979, which sends five competitive groups of both amateur and professional drivers trekking across the Sahara Desert. Since 2020 however, the Dakar has been held in Saudi Arabia.
The 2024 rally begins in the thousand-year-old city of AlUla – the race’s prologue, kicking off 12 stages of navigating across the country in 14 days, covering the equivalent distance of 5,000 km (3,100 miles).
Audi first brought its custom-built e-tron to Dakar during its 2022 event, but we got our first look at the off-road RS Q e-tron before that in the summer of 2021 as Audi was putting the EV through endurance testing in Spain. During its inaugural event, the RS Q e-tron would suffer a devastating blow to its suspension, requiring a second EV to be delivered and carry on. That driver would end up getting lost, eliminating Audi from contention.
By fall of 2022, Audi had returned with an upgraded version of its RS Q e-tron prototype with hopes for a better outcome at the 2023 Dakar Rally. Well, 2023 was slightly better – Audi completed the rally, scoring a total of 14 podium results on 15 event days including the prologue and even led the race for three days. However, a series of punctures, accident-related retirements, and a massive loss of driver time resulted in a 14th place finish.
Today, Audi announced it is back with V3 of its RS Q e-tron prototype, alongside confidence its latest improvements offer the perfect preparations to dominate the Saudi desert this January.
Audi continues to improve RS Q e-tron ahead of Dakar Rally
Audi shared details of its latest version of the off-road e-tron today, explaining it has used everything learned from the past two Dakar Rallies to adapt and deliver an EV that is more reliable and has shorter maintenance time between stages.
The aforementioned accidents of drivers Stéphane Peterhansel and Carlos Sainz during the 2023 Dakar Rally prompted Audi to put a keen focus on safety this go around, with the help of Dr. Leonardo Pascali, the project’s new technical director who has been working with his team since early summer.
One of the goals was to reduce peak vertical acceleration during landings and large jumps. Pascali says his team adjusted the springs, dampers and the bump stop in the chassis, distributing some of the load more effectively over time, while enable better control of the platform. The result is a safer ride on the tough terrain, as well as better overall EV performance.
The CFRP crash box at the EV’s front end structure is now longer and able to absorb more energy if another accident were to occur and engineers installed a modified front bonnet that is more effective in repelling splashes of mud and water, keeping the view through the windshield clearer. Audi also put a lot of time into the driver’s seats in these year’s Dakar EV, explaining that material stiffness and the geometries of the seat foam are affected by the temperature in the cockpit and made efforts to ensure its drivers feel less of the load of the drive over longer periods of time on the routes.
Lastly, Audi says it feels empowered ahead of the 2024 Dakar Rally thanks to clever improvements to the RS Q e-tron prototype’s maintenance capabilities. Per Audi:
Thanks to many practical ideas in this detail area, quite a few steps have been simplified. For example, modified bolted connections, improved tool holders, optimized filling cap devices for operating fluids, new locking solutions for body parts and bolted instead of glued connections all contribute to simpler and faster servicing.
Audi says it has been testing the third version of the RS Q e-tron since the middle of 2023 and feels as prepared as ever for Dakar in 2024. This year’s event will take place from January 5-19.
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If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you combine a fruit cart, a cargo bike, and a Piaggio Ape all in one vehicle, now you’ve got your answer. I submit, for your approval, this week’s feature for the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week column – and it’s a beautiful doozie.
Feast your eyes on this salad slinging, coleslaw cruising, tuber taxiing produce chariot!
I think this electric vegetable trike might finally scratch the itch long felt by many of my readers. It seems every time I cover an electric trike, even the really cool ones, I always get commenters poo-poo-ing it for having two wheels in the rear instead of two wheels in the front. Well, here you go, folks!
Designed with two front wheels for maximum stability, this trike keeps your cucumbers in check through every corner. Because trust me, you don’t want to hit a pothole and suddenly be juggling peaches like you’re in Cirque du Soleil: Farmers Market Edition.
To avoid the extra cost of designing a linked steering system for a pair of front wheels, the engineers who brought this salad shuttle to life simply side-stepped that complexity altogether by steering the entire fixed front end. I’ve got articulating electric tractors that steer like this, and so if it works for a several-ton work machine, it should work for a couple hundred pounds of cargo bike.
Featuring a giant cargo bed up front with four cascading fruit baskets set up for roadside sales, this cargo bike is something of a blank slate. Sure, you could monetize grandma’s vegetable garden, or you could fill it with your own ideas and concoctions. Our exceedingly talented graphics wizard sees it as the perfect coffee and pastry e-bike for my new startup, The Handlebarista, and I’m not one to argue. Basically, the sky is the limit with a blank slate bike like this!
Sure, the quality doesn’t quite match something like a fancy Tern cargo bike. The rim brakes aren’t exactly confidence-inspiring, but at least there are three of them. And if they should all give out, or just not quite slow you down enough to avoid that quickly approaching brick wall, then at least you’ve got a couple hundred pounds of tomatoes as a tasty crumple zone.
The electrical system does seem a bit underpowered. With a 36V battery and a 250W motor, I don’t know if one-third of a horsepower is enough to haul a full load to the local farmer’s market. But I guess if the weight is a bit much for the little motor, you could always do some snacking along the way. On the other hand, all the pictures seem to show a non-electric version. So if this cart is presumably mobile on pedal power alone, then that extra motor assist, however small, is going to feel like a very welcome guest.
The $950 price is presumably for the electric version, since that’s what’s in the title of the listing, though I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. I’ve bought a LOT of stuff on Alibaba, including many electric vehicles, and the too-good-to-be-true price is always exactly that. In my experience, you can multiply the Alibaba price by 3-4x to get the actual landed price for things like these. Even so, $3,000-$4,000 wouldn’t be a terrible price, considering a lot of electric trikes stateside already cost that much and don’t even come with a quad-set of vegetable baskets on board!
I should also put my normal caveat in here about not actually buying one of these. Please, please don’t try to buy one of these awesome cargo e-trikes. This is a silly, tongue-in-cheek weekend column where I scour the ever-entertaining underbelly of China’s massive e-commerce site Alibaba in search of fun, quirky, and just plain awesomely weird electric vehicles. While I’ve successfully bought several fun things on the platform, I’ve also gotten scammed more than once, so this is not for the timid or the tight-budgeted among us.
That isn’t to say that some of my more stubborn readers haven’t followed in my footsteps before, ignoring my advice and setting out on their own wild journey. But please don’t be the one who risks it all and gets nothing in return. Don’t say I didn’t warn you; this is the warning.
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Environment
Podcast: Trump/GOP go after EV/solar, Tesla, Ford, GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss Trump’s Big Beautiful bill becoming law and going after EVs and solar, Tesla, Ford, and GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
Today’s episode is brought to you by Bosch Mobility Aftermarket—A global leader and trusted provider of automotive aftermarket parts. To celebrate Amazon Prime Day July 8th through 11th, Bosch Mobility is offering exclusive savings on must-have auto parts and tools. Learn more here.
The show is live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel.
As a reminder, we’ll have an accompanying post, like this one, on the site with an embedded link to the live stream. Head to the YouTube channel to get your questions and comments in.
After the show ends at around 5 p.m. ET, the video will be archived on YouTube and the audio on all your favorite podcast apps:
We now have a Patreon if you want to help us avoid more ads and invest more in our content. We have some awesome gifts for our Patreons and more coming.
Here are a few of the articles that we will discuss during the podcast:
- Electrek FSGP 2025: New teams, new cars, same solar spirit
- Congress votes to send 2 million US jobs to China, increase deficit, energy costs
- Tesla (TSLA) confirms 384,000 deliveries in Q2 2025, right on expectations
- Tesla prototype sparks speculation: a Model Y, maybe slightly smaller
- Tesla launches Oasis Supercharger with solar farm and off-grid batteries
- Tesla unveils its LFP battery factory, claims it’s almost ready
- Here’s why Ford’s electric vehicle sales crashed by nearly a third in Q2
- The Chevy Equinox EV is GM’s breakout star, but that’s not the only surprise
- Xpeng launches G7, a new Tesla Model Y competitor for just $27,000
Here’s the live stream for today’s episode starting at 4:00 p.m. ET (or the video after 5 p.m. ET:
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