Yahoo Autos Work on an electric Audi R8 successor said to be 'well under way'
Two things we've been able to count on for the past seven or eight years are rumors of the Audi R8's death and rumors of an electric R8 successor. The former is finally fact: When the Audi R8 exits stage left into the underworld at the end of this model year, it will be the first time since 2006 that the Ingolstadt automaker has lacked a two-door sports car flagship. The latter continues to be rumor that appears to be inching closer to fact. A report in Autocar last year cited an automaker exec as saying that "work is well under way on an electric successor to the R8." This year, at the Munich Motor Show, Autocar spoke to technical chief Oliver Hoffman, who provided the detail that future "iconic cars – sports cars and so on ... will use systems and modules out of the [Scalable Systems Platform]."
He's referring to the SSP architecture that's said to eventually support 80% of products across Volkswagen Group brands, replacing the MLB, MMB, MQB, and MSB internal-combustion architectures and the battery-electric J1, MEB, PPE architectures. The modularity engineered into SSP will permit brands to tweak the bones to serve a brand's product philosophy, as Porsche is doing for its super-luxe SUV due in 2027 and codenamed K1, and to create specialty models. Audi is said to be looking at the specialty case for its iconic cars. Note the plural "cars," as well — an electric TT successor might follow the electric R8 in the same manner.
