Audi’s A5 family has enlarged with arrival of a Greener alternate to the now established performance type.

HAVING kicked off its A5 foray here with the tarmac tearaway V6 S5 (above), Audi New Zealand has now announced availability a more even-tempered, lower-priced and more running cost-effective plug-in hybrid choice.

Technical detail and pricing of the A5 Avant e-hybrid was announced earlier this year.

But just to remind it’s stickered from $117,990 plus on-road costs and formats in S Line spec, which means performance car aesthetics, 19-inch wheels, and in Audi’s terms a “high level of standard equipment” including a panoramic cluster and touchscreen dashboard display.

The powertrain comprises a 220kW 2.0-litre turbocharged four-cylinder petrol engine paired to a 105kW electric motor. It can accelerate to 100kmh in 5.9 seconds, and it has a pure electric range of up to 101km, measured on the WLTP cycle.

The car’s high-voltage battery accepts maximum AC charging power of 11 kW, so Audi cites charging time from 0 to 100 percent takes 2.5 hours.

It’s a different serving, then, than the $147,990 S5, whose twin-turbo 3.0-litre V6 hybrid produces 270kW/550Nm, just 31kW/50Nm shy of the old ‘full fat’ RS4 and will nail the 0-100kmh sprint in 4.5s.

If you’re confused by Audi badging, then the A5 is the new name for what we’ve known for the A4, because the German company has decided that all its odd-numbered product lines will be internal-combustion powered, while all its even-numbered ranges will be the electric vehicles.

Shelving the A4 badge is a big deal, because it has been around for 30 years. But the A5 has also always been a big hit here, so the change around is set to be a safe call.

In previous iterations, A5 has been a sports coupe. A4s have been sedans, cabriolets and wagons.

Whether an open A5 is coming is not clear but, there’s a fastback-ish A5 sedan and the wagon; Avant in Ingolstadt-speak.

Audi NZ has very much been electric intensive for the past couple of years and, though that’s an important future-proofing, the battery sector being severely de-powered in the current economic climate has shown in a sobering plummet in sales. While interest in internal combustion choices is also down, it’s nowhere near as bad. Bascially, anything that burns fossil fuel is welcome.

In that regard, Audi NZ is at pains to point out nonetheless that the powerplants are “efficient combustion engines”.

All have a 48-volt mild-hybrid (MHEV) technology, a system which can add up to 18kW under acceleration, and can also harvest a maximum of 25kW of kinetic energy when decelerating, all to save fuel.

‘All new’ is a bit of a stretch for this car, in that the A5 uses the platform from the previous A4. But Audi says it has improved the chassis, with stiffer front suspension mounts, what it calls ‘more rigidly connected steering’ and various tweaks to the damping. The aim is to make all models, feel more engaging for their driver.

The body shapes have all the usual historic styling signatures, some - such as the widened wheel arches - to subliminally remind you of it’s dusty old quattro heritage.