The press days are finished at the LA Auto Show, but things said there are still making news. While in California, Audi technical development chief Ulrich Hackenberg told reporters that his employer plans to release an electric car with a range of 280 miles "around 2017." Hackenberg wouldn't say what kind of car - or crossover, perhaps - it will be, but one report said it would be "a large car, fitting five large people with ample luggage space." Most observers expect it to be a sedan to take on the Tesla Model S.

It's no secret that Audi respects Tesla, and there have been hints that The House of Quattro is ready to really flex its progress-through-technology muscles in Tesla's direction. Audi will be applying lessons learned in the development of the coming R8 E-tron to the future electric car, after it managed to double the range of the electric sports car thanks to new battery technology to 450 kilometers, or 281 miles.

This puts another tentative all-electric Audi in the mix and another Tesla competitor, after rumors of a possible electric Q8 from February of this year. If an electric Q8 does happen, it's expected to be a challenger to the Tesla Model X. And that might not be all: Bloomberg reported in June that Audi had "devised blueprints for several high-performance electric saloons and sport-utility vehicles."

FRANKFURT, Nov 4 (Reuters) - BMW AG has quietly throttled back its expectations for car sales this year, despite reporting a forecast-beating operating profit in the third quarter, when strong demand for sports utility vehicles helped offset lackluster sales of electric cars.

BMW has also invested billions in developing electric car technology, launching its own "i" brand. But it had sold only 10,199 of the i3 hatchbacks by end-September. In February the company said it had "more than 11,000 orders."

According to a report by kfz-betrieb, a newspaper that keeps extremely close ties to the car dealers in Germany, the i3 isn’t faring as well in its home market as it is abroad. After nine months of sales, dealers have sold just half of the vehicles they were told to move. Those figures even include sales delivered during the i3’s initial hype; a dealer who requested anonymity for fear of repercussions has said that the honeymoon period is most definitely over.

Dealers have been able to sell 1900 units since the beginning of the year, a third of which came with the optional gasoline-fueled range extender, says kfz-betrieb. That’s woefully short of the 5000 to 6000 units the 43 German “i agents” are supposed to sell before the end of the year. This September has been the most disappointing month so far, with only 131 i3s finding new homes. BMW is blaming long shipping times of up to six months for the weak sales. “Dealers say they could sell more cars than allocated,” Reithofer recently claimed, but as Kfz-betrieb notes: “He did not say which dealers.”