Audi, Thank You For Making Diesel Tempting

Sucks to be you, environment!

Diesel will always split opinion, no matter how advanced it gets. The very fact that it has significant financial benefits over petrol these days and yet people still slag it off completely reinforces my point there. But these people who do go to the moon and back to stay away from it do make some pretty valid points:

It is an extremely dirty fuel, even in modern days when you compare it to their petrol counterparts. Even shiny new machines will still belch out a load of black soot under full throttle. While soot is hardly poisonous, it is one of the main reasons why our cities have such poor air quality. Also, a diesel powerband is quite poor. There are very little revs to play around with, and the power starts to die before you even go near the redline.

So it's pretty hard to make a diesel car sexy or exciting. But that hasn't stopped companies like Audi from trying...


Take a look at this RS5 with some stickers on it. It has a 4.2L N/A engine pro-

Wait. No. Let's have a closer squint at these numbers. This 'RS5' has a 3.0L twin-turbocharged V6 TDi diesel engine producing a rather lovely 380bhp. That's nice and all, but we have seen this kind of thing before with the BMW M550d, haven't we?

Bear with, because this new diesel that Audi is showcasing has something called an 'e-booster'. Don't worry, that is definitely much more exciting than it sounds; the e-booster is best described as an electronic supercharger. So to recap, this Audi is twin-turbocharged and supercharged all rolled into one V6 oil burner. Nice.

But how does this electric supercharger work then? Well the clever engineers at Audi have designed for it to work in tandem with the two turbos. Like any twin-turbo setup these days, there is a smaller turbo that spins at lower revs to give better acceleration, no matter what gear you're in. This 'supercharger' actually keeps the smaller turbo spinning even when braking for a corner by forcing air through it. The upshot is that there is no lag time waiting for the turbo to spool; put your foot down and the power is there for you, giving it naturally aspirated abilities.

Nice.

Some figures then? Well this setup means you'll have 553lb/ft of torque at your demand right from 1250rpm - barely idling - for proper head throwing g-forces. But we still have to be in reality; this is still a diesel that will hit max power at only 4200rpm, meaning if you rev anything past that you're going to be slower and much less efficient.

Diesels, Y U No Rev?

But hey, what is the upshot of 553lb/ft, 380bhp and the tried and tested Quattro system? A 0-60 time of under four seconds, of course. You can thank the lightning-fast eight speed auto for that. The new diesel will appear in the facelifted A6 and A7 in the near future.

If only the big cheeses could make diesels sound sexy now...