I Bet You All Forgot That Audi Made A Modern Car With A Rotary Engine

It’s common in this line of work to stumble upon a story while researching for another story. Digging through archives and old spec sheets usually uncovers other weird, forgotten facts, some of which are interesting enough to be highlighted on their own.

I was recently looking up which manufacturers produced vehicles with rotary engines for a story when I rediscovered a wonderful fact: Audi once built a range-extended EV with a rotary engine back in 2010.

It wasn’t a production car, obviously; just a concept: The original A1 e-tron. While the drivetrain never survived past that original hatchback, the company that helped Audi build the engine is still getting rotaries into EVs (except instead of German cars, they’re going into Chinese cars).

Audi’s History With The Wankel Engine

Before getting into the A1, it’s important to touch on how Audi got involved with NSU, the small West German car company that pioneered the rotary engine for production cars in the mid-1960s. NSU started out building knitting machines in the 1870s before moving to bicycles. It began building cars from 1906 to 1929 before pausing due to financial problems. Production wouldn’t resume until 1958, when it introduced the adorable Prinz compact car.

In 1963, NSU unveiled the world’s first series production rotary-powered car, the Spider. It used a single Wankel rotary engine mounted in the rear that displaced 497cc and made 50 horsepower. It was quickly followed up with the infamous Ro 80, a funky-looking sedan that used a front-mounted dual-rotary engine that made 115 horsepower.

The R0 80 drove pretty well, according to reviews of the era. But its constant drivetrain failures led to NSU having to replace customer engines multiple times under warranty, souring the brand’s reputation and costing them huge sums of money. By 1969, the company was backed into a corner, but instead of going under, it merged with Audi—which had been purchased by the Volkswagen Group in 1964—and continued building Ro 80s until 1977. That means technically, Audi sold a rotary-powered production car for a few years (it just wasn’t badged as an Audi).

The Ro 80 would be NSU’s final model before the brand was retired, and the final Western-built production car to use a rotary engine. There were a couple of Citroëns that used rotary engines around that time—the M35 and the GS—but those cars were out of production by ’75.

Audi’s Brief Rotary Revival

Revealed in March 2010 at the Geneva Motor Show, the A1 e-tron concept was Audi’s answer to the emerging popularity of range-extended electric propulsion, having debuted roughly three years after the original Chevy Volt. It was the third-ever e-tron-branded vehicle, following the R8-shaped e-tron concept revealed at Frankfurt in 2009 and the TT-shaped e-tron concept shown in Detroit earlier in 2010.

Instead of some far-out concept, the A1 e-tron was presented as a wholly developed production vehicle. Based on the standard A1, it carried minimal design changes, a full interior, and a working electric powertrain connected to a functioning single-rotor engine mounted in the rear, under the trunk area. The specs weren’t mindblowing, and lined up roughly with most other European city cars of the time. From Car and Driver:

This A1 is propelled by a transverse synchronous electric motor, mounted up front and low in the chassis. It draws power from a 12-kWh lithium-ion battery pack mounted beneath the floor and has a continuous power output of 61 hp and 111 lb-ft of torque. Just like the Porsche 911 Turbo—okay, maybe not just like it—it is capable of generating even more power in short bursts, up to 102 hp and 177 lb-ft. According to Audi, 0-to-62 mph plays out in 10.2 seconds and top speed is pegged at 80 mph.

The rotary was a 254-cc unit that had no physical connection to the wheels. It was purely a generator, using a 3.2-liter tank of gasoline to deliver up to 15 kW (around 20 horsepower) to the batteries to keep them topped up. The gear selector had three positions: Drive, Reverse, Neutral, with a button at the bottom labeled “Range.” When selected, that button would fire up the rotary to get the batteries charging. If the battery got low enough, though, the Wankel would spin up automatically. Combined, the setup was good for roughly 155 miles of range.

Why did Audi pick a rotary engine? While I’d like to think it wanted to pay homage to NSU, the engine’s supplier provided C/D with a far more rational answer back in 2011, about a year after the car’s reveal:

AVL, an Austrian powertrain-engineering firm, collaborated with Audi on this project. According to AVL vice-president Dr. Günter Fraidl, various internal-combustion designs, turbines, and fuel cells were examined to find the ideal engine for the E-Tron’s range extender. The rotary landed the gig because of its classic merits: compactness, smoothness, and reliability.

So What Happened?

Upon its reveal, Audi seemed pretty serious about putting the A1 e-tron into production. The company released fuel economy figures (an estimated 149 mpg on the European cycle), promised a production start date of 2012, and built 20 prototypes that underwent testing in Munich.

Audi even let journalists get behind the wheel for brief test drives. Car and Driver found it just as pleasant as any other EV:

For something with so little power, it launches with great enthusiasm. The nearly total lack of powertrain noise as you shoot down the road is somewhat disconcerting, the loudest sounds coming from the wind and the asphalt itself. You get accustomed to the futuristic whoosh quickly, though, and stomping on the “gas” gets addictive.

We found the A1 e-tron surprisingly playful and a willing dance partner when the urge strikes to start throwing it around. The steering is direct, the brakes adequate and easily modulated. You would hardly know it’s electric if it weren’t for the lack of noise.

Despite all of these efforts, Audi decided the car was no longer worth the trouble by 2012. British publication Car Magazine, in speaking with inside sources, claimed that the car’s “complicated development process, combined with small profit margins on superminis and the sorry state of the European market,” killed any hopes of the A1 e-tron and its rotary engine making production.

The Rotary Range Extender Lives On

Seeing a potential rotary revival die before it could even live is sad. It would’ve been extremely cool to see a straight-laced brand like Audi bring the rotary back to Germany. Just imagine how many weird engine swaps the car world would’ve gotten out of this? Alas, it wasn’t meant to be. But the idea of a rotary range extender is far from dead. In fact, it’s more alive than it’s ever been, thanks to Mazda and a Chinese company called Changan.

Mazda, which I’ve somehow avoided mentioning in this story until right now, revived the concept of a rotary range extender back in 2020 when it revealed plans to put a single-rotor engine into its MX-30 electric car. That EREV entered production in 2023, but didn’t make it to the U.S. before sales of the car were ended here (the car lives on in overseas markets with the available Wankel range extender).

More recently, Harbin Dongan Auto Engine, a subsidiary of the Chinese firm Changan Automobile Group, announced plans to put a rotary range extender into production in 2027. According to Car News China, the naturally aspirated, single-rotor engine was developed in a collaboration with none other than AVL, the same Austrian brand that worked with Audi on the A1 e-tron’s rotary engine. It’s nice to see the company still believes in the concept, even 16 years later.

Harbin Dongan’s rotary isn’t designed for cars as much as it is for drones, helicopters, and other flying vehicles. From Car News China:

Dongan further claimed the engine is adaptable to various low-altitude applications and can be used in medium-to-large manned low-altitude vehicles due to its ultra-high power density, compact size, and NVH (noise, vibration, and harshness) performance.

Even if this engine were destined for a Chinese EREV or two, it’s very unlikely we’d see it in America, seeing as how Chinese cars are too expensive to import. Still, I think it would’ve been cool. For now, our best hope of seeing a rotary-powered vehicle Stateside is still Mazda, which launched an entire department in 2024 dedicated to making the engine viable. Let’s pray it pulls through.

Top graphic images: Audi; Mazda