Saar: It will make its world premiere in San Francisco on September 17, 2018.

Audi’s first-ever pure electric vehicle (EV), the e-Tron, has officially entered production at the company’s plant in Brussels. The D-Day has come just two weeks before the e-Tron makes its world premiere in San Francisco on September 17, 2018. Audi is also celebrating the fact that the e-Tron’s production also marks the world’s first certified CO2-neutral process. The company claims that its plant in the capital city of Belgium “offsets all emissions produced in production and at the site, primarily by using energy from renewable sources, but also through environmental projects.” That’s pretty neat!

The carmaker took approximately two years to upgrade its facility in Brussels in order to accommodate a production process that’s considerably different from manufacturing conventional vehicles. Part of the ramp-up process was to set up a manufacturing area for EV batteries. As far as the electric motors are concerned, those are being built in Audi’s plant in Hungary. The said facility, which is over 1,200km away from Brussels and went operational towards the end of July this year, currently employs around 100 people and is producing 400 electric axle motors every day.

The Audi e-Tron was originally slated to make a world premiere at the Audi Summit in Brussels on August 30, 2018. However, that event was cancelled due to the diesel emissions fiasco that the Ingolstadt-based automaker is currently entangled in. Over the past few months, Audi has teased several revolutionary aspects about the e-Tron, such as optionally available digital ORVMs and the unique recuperation system that can extend the car’s range considerably. Audi has also been kind enough for revealing how the interiors of the e-Tron will look like.

We also know that the e-Tron will have an electric Quattro four-wheel-drive system which will comprise two electric motors, one each for the front and rear axles. The dual electric motors will produce 360PS of power and 561Nm of torque. This peak performance, Audi claims, is available for a total of 60 seconds. The time cap, as per Audi, allows the e-Tron’s electric powerplant to accelerate from nought to an electronically limited top speed of 200kmph several times consecutively without any output loss.

There’s also a boost mode available with the Audi e-Tron. It is available for a duration of just eight seconds but once activated, the total oomph from the dual electric motors shoots up to 408PS/664Nm. As far as the battery pack is concerned, it will be able to house 95kWh worth of juice for the e-Tron to travel over 400km on a single charge. With a fast charging capability of up to 150kW, the battery pack can be replenished completely from nothing in under 30 minutes.