The DS E-Tense Performance Concept is a glimpse of what a sporty luxury EV from France may look like.
DS Automobiles has joined a whole bunch of other luxury car makers like Genesis in committing to 100% electric vehicle (EV) sales within ten years. For DS Automobiles, the transition is a rather natural one. They were the first luxury car brand to be involved in Formula E and they’ve had electrified options in their range for a while now. Every new DS Automobile vehicle from 2024 will be purely electric.
But to lead the product charge into electrification, the brand has revealed an all new concept car that takes the performance aspects of electrification seriously. That car is the DS E-Tense Performance Concept, conceptualised by the DS PERFORMANCE team behind their very successful Formula E car.
The Performance Concept actually takes a lot of technology and inspiration from their Formula E single seat racer, the FE21. The entire drivetrain, for instance comes from that racer. With dual electric motors sending up to 250 kW to the front axle and 350 kW to the rear axle, this French performance electric vehicle will get 815hp and 8,000Nm of torque at the wheels! They’ve even fine tuned the regeneration system to extract up to 600kW from deceleration. The actual brake discs and pads are just there for legal and safety reasons, this thing can brake just using its regen system alone.
The battery is another super high-tech component of the DS E-Tense Performance Concept. It is a compact module in a carbon-aluminium composite envelope. This battery is centrally placed in a rear-biased position for the perfect weight distribution. Technology behind this battery comes from a combination of DS Performance engineering as well as TotalEnergies and its subsidiary Saft. It features an innovative cooling system for cells called Quartz EV Fluid, which is a completely unique solution to the thermal problems faced by batteries. This Quartz EV Fluid is part of the reason why 600kW of regeneration can be extracted during deceleration.
Being a possible ‘hero’ EV under the DS brand, this carbon-tub concept was also designed to stand out with the brand’s latest design language. The DS Design Studio in Paris worked on the DS E-Tense Performance concept. The grille takes inspiration from the DS Aero Sport Lounge from 2020, giving the DS Automobiles logo a 3D effect and a special welcome sequence. The new daytime running light design is thinner than anything else on the market with 80 LEDs making up the whole thing. Instead of headlights, two cameras that capture useful drive data have been positioned in the front clusters.
The design also incorporates a pretty unique beetle-effect interference colour which changes depending on the angle it is observed from the lightning conditions. The 21″ wheels are of an ultra aerodynamic design that go well with the rest of the design.
We don’t yet get a look at the car’s interior, but they say it uses the same bucket seats and steering wheel from the Formula E car. You also get Focal Utopia for sound inside with Scala Utopia Evo speakers.
