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  SHARP AUTO
  MARC LICHTE HAS SPECTACULAR HAIR.
It’s not quite as wild as Albert Einstein’s famous locks; it’s shorter and obviously better groomed and more tamed, but it’s not altogether dissimilar, and it gives Lichte the air of a creative genius, which he certainly might be. As the head of design for Audi, he is the man ultimately responsible for every car and SUV the German automaker has produced since 2014, when he took the job.
Lichte was born in Germany in 1969, and joined Volkswagen’s design depart- ment while still pursuing his degree at the Pforzheim University of Applied Science. In other words, he’s been drawing cars his whole life, but he says his latest work — the all-electric Audi E-Tron GT — is the most attractive car he has ever drawn.
“The basis for [a] good design is [its] proportions, and these proportions are simply awesome. Let me explain with a sketch,” says Lichte, drawing the new E-Tron GT live on a video call. “Since
I was a young boy, when I sketch cars — and I’m always sketching cars, even if I'm sitting in a meeting with the board
BY matt bubbers members — I start with the wheels. We
have to have big wheels,” he adds. Next, Lichte explains that electric cars can have very low hoods, since they don’t need to make space for a big combustion engine, and that they managed to keep the car’s roofline so low by making cut- outs for the rear seats in the underfloor battery pack. Lichte’s especially proud of the extremely wide haunches on
this car, which make it look muscular and planted on the road. And while the GT
is much lower than the sleek Audi A7, it’s still a spacious four-door. “Even a tall guy like me, I have enough headroom,” Lichte says, still drawing.
The thing about electric vehicles, still in their infancy, is nobody yet knows what they’re supposed to look like. While that gives designers plenty of creative freedom, it hasn’t always turned out well. “Our competitors [have come] up with some, I would say, bizarre and strange design language [for their EVs] because they wanted to visualize, ‘Hello! Have a look! I’m an EV!’ but our approach is different,” says
Lichte. “EVs at Audi will be the most attractive cars — that’s it.”
That doesn’t mean electric cars will look the same as what’s on the road today. “I can share with you a secret about Project Artemis. It’s a car which is made for long-distance travel in the super-high-premium segment,” says Lichte. (This mysterious vehicle’s codename is rumoured to be Landjet.) “It’s more or less a successor to the A8,” Lichte explains, although he prom- ises that it will look radically different.
When it comes to promises, Lichte
has always kept his. His beautiful 2014 Prologue concept promised to move the brand forward in a fresh, new, avant-garde direction. It did just that. The original E-Tron GT concept, first shown in 2018, looks identical to the production car Audi unveiled earlier this year. And we agree with Lichte; it’s the most attractive car he’s ever drawn, and maybe even the best-look- ing car Audi has ever made. Based on Lichte’s track record, it’s impossible not get excited by the prospect of Project Artemis. It could be his unified theory.
ELECTRIC TOUCH
Audi’s top designer on why electric cars don’t need to look electric, and a coming design revolution
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