The last car with a combustion engine will roll off the assembly line at Audi in five years.
From then on, the VW subsidiary only plans to use electric cars.
A radical step.
Ingolstadt - The German carmaker has sold five million Audi A3s since the 1990s.
Soon, this successful model will no longer exist: From 2026, the VW subsidiary will only produce pure battery vehicles.
Even hybrid drives are no longer an option for Audi.
That emerges from a report in the
Süddeutsche Zeitung
.
The car manufacturer from Ingolstadt is even converting the flagship R8 completely to electric drive.
At least when it comes to optics, Audi remains true to tradition; customers will find the same shapes in the new electric models.
Audi: Only 500 employees were inaugurated
Audi has around 90,000 employees worldwide, but only 500 knew about the carmaker's new course.
Over the years they secretly, quietly and quietly developed the new concept.
Audi boss Markus Duesmann is considered to be the driver of the upheaval, he made a significant contribution to the electromobility plan.
The parent company Volkswagen is also on board: Herbert Diess, VW CEO, is an advocate of e-mobility and recently announced that he wanted to make Volkswagen the market leader in this area.
The Trinity model is considered the flagship of the VW Group.
Audi already has the Etron and Etron GT models and is planning a Q6 off-road vehicle with electric drive.
For many, however, the change came as a surprise, because Audi is the first German car manufacturer to switch so radically to e-mobility.
Audi: Is the diesel scandal one of the reasons for the change of course?
The process surrounding the diesel scandal revealed, among other things, that Audi helped develop the exhaust gas cleaning software at VW. The then CEO Rupert Stalder was temporarily in custody. Nevertheless, Audi managed comparatively well to shift the greatest damage to its image on the main brand VW. With the change of course in the direction of e-mobility, Audi could now open a new chapter. But the emissions scandal is not the only reason for the radical change.
The success of Tesla paves the way: the US automaker and pioneer in the field of e-mobility is now more valuable with a market capitalization of around 490 billion euros than parent company Volkswagen, which currently has 133 billion euros.
But even the fight against climate change is not leaving car manufacturers unaffected.
The EU had introduced stricter CO2 regulations and in the USA Joe Biden is changing course in terms of climate protection.
Social change is another factor.
Because there is a rethinking of climate and environmental policy among the population, as a survey shows:
Audi relies on e-mobility: This is how the competition reacts
It is estimated that a third of all new cars could run on batteries by 2030. The competition reacts accordingly: The US car manufacturer General Motors does not want to sell any more combustion engines from 2035, just like Volvo or Honda, who want to take the step a little earlier. In Germany, Volkswagen had already announced that the last production start on the combustion platform would take place in 2026. Even Porsche wants to get out of the internal combustion engine, the only exception being the 911 series.
BMW brings out the iX and i4 models, VW has the ID.3 and ID.4 and soon the Trinity model. At Mercedes the E-model is called EQS, at Opel Corsa-e and Zafira-e, the luxury brand Porsche already has the Taycan. Nevertheless, there are uncertainties: Will the customers accept the offer? What happens if Trump or a like-minded person comes to power again in 2024? Audi boss Markus Duesmann seems to take it easy. For him, electric cars are the future.