Audi has three new drivers for its 24 Hours of Le Mans effort as it bids to regain its crown from archrival Peugeot.

Former Corvette Racing driver Marcel Fassler and André Lotterer and Benoit Treluyer--who have both enjoyed success in Japan’s Super GT series--will share one of Audi’s three R15 LMP1-class turbodiesels. They replace three-time Le Mans winner Marco Werner, Alexandre Premat and Lucas Luhr.

“In view of our strong competitors, we have to be perfectly positioned in terms of drivers,” said Audi Sport boss Wolfgang Ullrich. “Therefore, we decided to extend our driver lineup. Marcel, André and Benoît attracted our attention during the past two years in a particularly positive way.”

Fassler, Lotterer and Treluyer will race the 2010-spec Audi, known internally as the R15-plus, for the first time in the Spa 1000KM round of the European Le Mans Series in early May. The German manufacturer is treating this as a warm-up for the 24 Hours in June.

Veteran Werner, a former American Le Mans Series champion with Audi, has been dropped after failing to get to grips with the R15 last year. Audi told Premat he must focus on the DTM touring-car series in Germany, while Luhr appears to have fallen out of favor after crashing out of Le Mans last year.

Allan McNish, Rinaldo Capello and Tom Kristensen will share one of the Audis, while we expect that Romain Dumas, Timo Bernhard and Mike Rockenfeller will share the other.

We're all primed up for the arrival of the next-gen Audi A3, but it seems there's not much demand for the current model--so little, in fact, that Audi is putting production on hold for a week.

The cutback, due to take place the week of February 15, means over half of the 4,500 workers at the Ingolstadt plant will be off work. The slow sales are probably due to the car's aging design. It was first introduced to the market in 2004, and with an all-new version expected by 2011, buyers aren't shelling out for the 2010 model--even the Green Car of the Year-winning A3 TDI.

The news is one of the few dim sports in Audi's currently very successful sales reports. As we reported earlier this year, Audi was the leading luxury carmaker in the U.S. in terms of percentage lost in sales in 2009, and it has also been awarded for customer loyalty. Audi's market share in America is also currently at its highest point ever.

Coming possibly as early as later this year, though not expected until mid-2011, the next Audi A3 is expected to be better out(edited)d to compete with the likes of the BMW 1-Series, with a larger overall footprint and sleeker design, more in line with the rest of the newer Audi lineup. Little in the way of hard details are known about the car, but it's expected to get the same 200-horsepower 2.0-liter TFSI engine that's in the current model in addition to the 2.0-liter TDI diesel engine also currently available, and will be offered with front- and optional quattro all-wheel drive. A six-speed manual transmission will be standard, and the S tronic six-speed automatic will likely be an optional upgrade.

DETROIT — We didn’t think it possible, but Audi has made the e-tron electric car even sexier.

The German automaker unveiled the second iteration of its sweet electric concept here at the North American International Auto Show. It is sleeker, simpler and less powerful than the concept first seen at the Frankfurt auto show in September and then at the Los Angeles show last month. But it looks less like a concept designed to wow journalists and more like a production car designed to attract buyers.

That sound you heard was Elon Musk and Henrik Fisker screaming in anguish. The Audi e-tron could unseat the Tesla Roadster and Fisker Karma as the sexiest EV on the road when it appears in 2012.

Version 2.0 is leaner and more aggressive than the first e-tron, which looked a lot like the R8, and draws styling influences from the TT and the S5. The proportions are spot-on: the car is 70 inches wide, 154.72 inches long and 48 inches tall.

Audi has radically simplified the drivetrain, opting to put two motors at the rear axle instead of one at each end. That means the car no longer has all-wheel drive. The motors are liquid cooled and rated at 75 kilowatts (about 102 horsepower) apiece. The first version produced 313 horsepower. Look for a zero to 100 km/hr time of 5.9 seconds, which is about one second slower than v1.0 and two seconds slower than the Roadster. It’ll need another 5.1 seconds to get from 100 km/hr to 120 km/hr.

The car rides on an aluminum and carbon fiber space frame, and most of the body panels are fiber-reinforced plastic. Audi claims the car weighs 2,976 pounds — about 550 pounds less than the first e-tron — and has a weight distribution of 40:60. Torque-vectoring directs power to the rear wheels as necessary for optimal traction. Flaps at the C-pillar open and close as needed to provide cooling air for the motors and battery.

Juice comes from a 45 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion pack mounted in front of the rear axle. The pack weighs 399 kilos (about 880 pounds). Audi claims it’s got a range of 155 miles and says you’ll need 11 hours to recharge it at 220 volts. Plug it into a 440 line and recharge time is cut to two hours.

Of course the car has regenerative braking, but Audi’s developed a novel system. The front brakes are hydraulic fixed-caliper units. But there are two electrically operated floating calipers at each rear wheel activated through a “brake by wire” system. Audi says it eliminates frictional losses due to residual slip and allows for all of the energy generated during braking to be returned to the battery.

The e-tron is not a wild styling exercise or a concept that will be wheeled into Audi’s museum. It is a production-intent vehicle that Audi says will be on the road in 2012.

“We are confident the name e-tron will take its place alongside the names of other great Audi technologies like Quattro and TDI,” said Rupert Stadler, chairman of Audi’s board of management. “Just as people don’t say they have all-wheel drive, they have Quattro, and they don’t say they have a diesel, they have a TDI, people won’t say they have an electric car. They will say they have an e-Tron.”

Elon Musk and Henrik Fisker might have something to say about that.

Audi’s Electric Car Gets Even Hotter

No one will argue that 2009 was a bad year for the automotive industry in general, but more than one company was able to slip through the cracks and actually come out ahead. Much ado has been made about Kia, Hyundai, and Subaru and their big years, but they're not the only ones. On the other side of the planet, Audi not only managed a profit but is planning a big 2010.

"Although the effects of the global economic crisis will still be noticeable in the next twelve months, we aim to achieve further growth in 2010," said Rupert Stadler, chairman of the board of Audi. "Great uncertainty still predominated at the start of the year. Yet in a joint show of strength all Audi employees worked with dedication so that we could hold our ground more successfully than the competition could."

How much more successfully? According to Audi, it not only launched six new or updated models in 2009 but managed to end all four quarters and the full year with a profit. The company even raised its global sales goal for the year back in November by 25,000 units. While not even Audi could escape the perils of the U.S. market, the company hit it big in China and shattered its 2008 sales record, a key component in the company's ability to remain profitable.

Riding high on its comparable massive success in 2009, Audi is keeping the pedal on the floor in 2010. Fresh off the debut of the new A8, the company says it plans to release eight more new or updated models next year that are expected to include the production A1 compact and A7 large sedan. Audi also says it plans to spend big on its various investments in 2010, but wouldn't be more specific, so we'll have to wait and see where the Euros land as the year goes on.

Audi Sport Team Joest has announced that the Audi R15 TDI will return to America to take on Acura and Peugeot at Petit Le Mans, Road Atlanta’s thousand-mile endurance classis, on September 26.

Audi will bring two diesel-powered R15 sports racing cars, all driven by Le Mans veterans. Dindo Capello and Allan McNish, who won Sebring in 2006 and Petit Le Mans in 2007 and 2008, will drive one car; Lucas Luhr, and Marco Werner, the other.

"The race at Road Atlanta already marks the first part of our preparation for the 24 Hours of Le Mans 2010,” said Head of Audi Motorsport, Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich in an official Audi press release. "We want to use it as an opportunity for our engineers to learn even more about the new Audi R15 TDI in direct competition with strong rivals. A lot of things can be simulated on test rigs and in track tests. But nothing can replace the experience gathered in actual racing events.”

Petit Le Mans will be only the third competition outing for the new Audis. Many people believe Audi’s 2009 Le Mans loss was the result of insufficient race experience.

The Audis have not raced in the U.S. since winning the Mobil 1 Sebring Twelve Hours in February. At Sebring, the more reliable Audis beat the faster Peugeots by only 22 seconds after twelve hours of racing. The lone LMP1 Acura entry of Patrón Highcroft dropped out with mechanical problems after qualifying fastest.

Audi faced off against Peugeot at Le Mans, losing the race for only the second time this decade. The usually perfect Audi operation missed the setup, leaving the Audis down on speed. One car was retired after an accident; another spent so much time in the pits it was never in the running. The lone surviving Audi finished third, six laps behind the leader.

"We’re convinced that we weren’t able to fully exploit the potential of the R15 TDI at Le Mans,” Dr. Ullrich said. "At Road Atlanta, we’ll have the opportunity to test on Sunday before the race so that we should be in a better position than we were at Le Mans. Despite the strong competition by Acura/Honda, Peugeot, Mazda, Oreca and other prototype teams. we figure on having good chances of fighting for victory, as we did over the past few years.”

The R15’s predecessor, the R10 TDI, was the first Audi—indeed, the first sports racing prototype—to use a turbocharged diesel engine. The R10 was incredibly successful, winning its debut at Sebring in 2006, and winning Le Mans and the American Le Mans Series championship three years’ running. The R10 won 18 races in the ALMS, including winning Petit Le Mans from 2006–2008.

Audi obviously hopes to achieve the same domination in 2010 with the R15.

Besides avenging its on-track defeat, Audi is returning to America to promote its turbo-diesel road cars. The Audi Q7 TDI 3.0 has been available in the USA since the beginning of the year, and the Audi A3 TDI 2.0 will arrive at U.S. dealerships in fall.

Petit Le Mans powered by MAZDA6 caps a four-day, twelve-race motorsports weekend at Road Atlanta. Please visit the Road Atlanta Web site for more information.