Is Audi Going To Make The Tron Sequel Of Audis With A New A2?

The Audi A2 hatchback is set to make a return by the end of the year, according to sources reported by the British Autocar. The original A2, produced for the first few years of this millennium, was a small, light, and frugal boutique supermini crafted from aluminum. Over two decades after the last original A2 was built, Audi will likely bring it back as an entry-level EV.

Autocar is reporting that the reborn city car, likely to be called the A2 E-tron, would replace the A1 hatchback and Q2 crossover models that are set to end production around the same time as the new car is to be unveiled. If its starting price remains at the estimated £30k GBP or 35,000 Euro, the A2 E-tron wouldn’t be significantly more expensive than the Q2 is, and it might also include crossover styling cues as well as hat tips for the original A2 design. The MEB platform would make it a sibling of the VW ID.3 EV hatchback, and interestingly, another rear-wheel-drive Audi, a drivetrain configuration that’s not something the manufacturer is historically known for.

Basing a future entry-level EV design on a previous design is something that European manufacturers, such as Renault, have bet on in recent times. Renault’s R5 E-Tech won the European Car of the Year award for 2025; its design is a successful update of the LeCar and Supercinq shapes of ‘80s Renault 5 models. For Audi, the A2 is its best-known small car, thanks to its looks and technology alike.

But this is where the paths between the original car and the 2027 sequel are likely to diverge. The 2000 Audi A2 was a truly imaginative, groundbreaking small car from a manufacturer that traditionally hadn’t offered that many city cars before. It utilized lightness to an extent that a platform-shared EV can never manage: if the new A2 E-tron is based on the ID.3, it will likely weigh double when compared to the fuel-sipping predecessor.

It wasn’t just its use of an aluminum space frame construction that made the 2000 Audi A2 famous. It combined the Audi feel of substance and style with impressive mileage figures: while the regular 1.4-liter and 1.6-liter gasoline engines were rated at 39-40 MPG US, the three-cylinder turbodiesels achieved nearly 55MPG in normal specification.

But the true crown jewel was the A2 3L hyper-miling special, which could achieve the titular three-liter fuel consumption per 100km. That’s 78.4 MPG US. It managed it with some added aerodynamic improvements, lighter wheels and seats, thinner glass, and an optimized automated manual transmission, and the stripper version did away with power steering and air conditioning to save even more weight.

The original Audi A2 was an expensive flop – will the new one be another?

The A2, however, was never a sales success, far from it. According to an often quoted study by Bernstein Research, the A2 was estimated to have made a 1.33 billion Euro loss for Audi, or over 7500 Euros per car. In today’s money, that’s easily £2.3B, or $14k per car. It was far cheaper for the customer to drive an A2 than for the company to make them. By comparison, the Smart ForTwo was absolutely disastrous, as it cost its manufacturer 3.35 billion euros in losses. Audi built fewer than 180,000 A2 cars, making surviving examples future classics if nothing else.

Only a handful of classic-shape A2s have made it to the States, but as 25-year-old cars, they are now legal to import. It remains to be seen if the new EV descendant is deemed export-friendly across the Atlantic; however, BMW did bring the i3 city car to the States, and if there’s a recent car that’s playing in the same ballpark, the i3 is definitely it.

But will the end product be worth the effort? Audi was able to create a cheap-to-run and aerodynamically slick 2000-lb hatchback 25 years ago, development costs be damned, but if the future equivalent needs to be sustainable for the manufacturer and based on existing solutions such as the MEB platform, it will be irredeemably half-hearted.

It’s hard not to compare it to the original 1982 Tron movie and its wayward sequels, Tron: Legacy and Tron: Ares. Both were based on a beloved but commercially questionable original, which failed to capture the hearts of moviegoers. Halfheartedly resurrecting the E-tron brand name for this car is a little too on the nose, right?

Maybe they can convince Daft Punk to come out of retirement for the ad campaigns.

Photos: Audi

Top graphic images: Audi; DepositPhotos.com