Electro Immobility

Electric cars are going to be big in 2020, though if regulations stay the way they are, perhaps not in Singapore.

If carmakers have their way, 2020 will surely be the year of the electric car. In particular, the premium electric car.

The throne that Tesla has occupied virtually unchallenged is about to receive a few pretenders in the year to come.

Audi is to launch its long-awaited e-tron SUV this month at the Singapore Motor Show and recently announced its sibling, the e-tron Sportback coupeSUV. Later in the year, it’s all but a certainty Audi will release the e-tron GT sports saloon, and looking slightly further ahead, an R8-based e-tron sports car is not too unlikely a prospect.

BMW will not be outdone. There’s an all-electric version of its super-popular X3 SUV, the iX3, arriving this year, and also its smaller, funkier cousin, the Mini Cooper SE. And that’s to say nothing of the iNEXT (a mid-sized SUV, we think) and the i4 sports saloon arriving in 2021.

Mercedes-Benz already has the EQC and there’s plenty more where that came from, with newly installed boss Ola Kallenius promising “electromobility will become the core business of Mercedes-Benz” during his keynote at the Frankfurt Motor Show. There, Mercedes-Benz exhibited the Vision EQS concept car that previews an all-electric S-Class, which is about as sure as it gets that the carmaker is serious about this electric thing.

Then we come to Porsche, which will present the most serious challenge to Tesla’s crown yet with the Taycan. Tesla is so worried about the lunatic Taycan Turbo S stealing its lightning, it’s developing an equally loony Model S Plaid (long story, it’s a Spaceballs reference) to counter it. The performance electric car arms race is well and truly on, then.