Event Report: 2019 Frankfurt IAA

Held across a sprawling campus of convention centers, the Frankfurt Motor Show (a.k.a. IAA) is the largest industry car show in the world. This the home market event for Audi and its parent the Volkswagen Group, and as a result there is no shortage of news made at the Frankfurt IAA. Electromobility, performance and a combination of the two seemed to be the most popular themes in Frankfurt, so here’s a summary of  what any e-tron aficionado will want to know… followed by a large photo gallery.

Audi’s world debut concept car was the latest in their AI series of autonomous and electric-focused studies. Dubbed AI:TRAIL, consider it a sci-fi future “allroad”, complete with drone-located auxiliary lighting. More HERE.

In a surprise move, Audi also flashed the upcoming e-tron Sportback model. Yes, they showed a mule liveried prototype earlier this year at Geneva, but this appeared to be a final production undisguised real thing. Interestingly, no further details or images were released beyond the Audi presentation.

Formula E’s own considerable expansion was also on full display at Frankfurt. For Audi, this included the new livery for next season’s e-tron FE06 racer. That car was also joined by new competitors from Porsche, BMW and Mercedes also in place at the IAA.

Emphasizing the focus on electric drivetrains event further, Audi also brought previous concepts like the Aicon, AI:ME and e-tron GT concept cars to Frankfurt as well.

As if inspired by childhood model car kits, one eye-grabbing element of the Audi stand at Frankfurt was the #Unboxingetron display. It featured a full size e-tron, plus other configurator options such as wheel choices, matrix beam headlights, brake and grille finish options, the battery and more. Hat tip to Audi’s booth designers for this very unique fixture.

Porsche pulled the wraps off of their own first electric car, known as Taycan. We cover Taycan closely in these pages, because details of the car hint at details we’ll see in the upcoming e-tron GT. Both cars share the Volkswagen Group’s J1 component set, meaning technical details of the top dog e-tron GT will likely be very similar to what you see here.

Another brand with an interesting platform sibling launch is Volkswagen and its new ID.3. Roughly Golf sized, the ID.3 is the first production product to be based on the Volkswagen Group’s Modular Electric Toolkit (MEB) architecture. Audi’s already shown a Q4 concept based on MEB, and we know it’s considering multiple models to be based on MEB.

Check out more photos from the 2019 Frankfurt IAA below.