The Audi R8 e-tron, launched in series-production trim to much fanfare at the 2015 Geneva auto show, is already dead. The company has pulled the plug on its all-electric tech showpiece and is in the process of delivering the last few units before production stops for good.
It’s a curious ending to the ambitious, high-profile project. After last year’s Geneva debut, the car was wheeled out once more two months later when it served as a showcase for autonomous driving at the CES Asia technology show in Shanghai. Then silence fell.
There was no sales literature for the R8 e-tron, and the car never appeared in Audi’s online configurator. Curious customers of the Europe-only car were referred by dealers to Audi’s headquarters. The price" A cool 1 million euros (about $1.1 million). “We could have built more than we did,” said an Audi representative. But how many were built" No comment. “Fewer than 100” is the most precise number we could get.

The R8 e-tron’s illustrious public career began with a concept car (above) unveiled at the 2009 Frankfurt auto show. In 2010, then-R&D chief Michael Dick drove a few laps in it on the 24 Hours of Le Mans course; two years later, his successor, Wolfgang Dürheimer, stopped the project.
When Dürheimer’s successor, Ulrich Hackenberg, put it back on track, Audi decided to turn it into a variant of the second-generation R8, and it was launched in at the 2015 Geneva show...