Don't tell Audi of America President Johan de Nysschen, but someone at the company went and made an electric vehicle -- and a pretty good-looking one, at that.

Of course, we kid, we kid; the man's not fundamentally opposed to electrics -- just certain aspects of the way the technology is being promoted. And, with the e-Tron's R8-inspired design in Audi's stable (proving true these rumors), he himself has plenty of reasons to make converts out of electric naysayers.

According to the AutoWeek article, the company is behind electrics for various reasons -- immediately available torque in a sports car such as this one, for one thing, as well as the same reducing-oil-dependency and cleaner-emissions arguments you hear ad nauseam -- but is also upfront about the drawbacks of how electrics exist in their current iteration. The Catch-22 of EVs is that performance and range increase only with larger, heavier batteries, while the larger and heavier the batteries become, the less efficient (as in, less fun to drive, more power drained to move the vehicle) the cars become. But these are issues everyone is trying to tackle in the electric arena, and if we're going to have to live with drawbacks, we'd rather they exist in a car that looks like the e-Tron.

(Photo from AutoWeek)