German automaker Audi, which is known for its iconic Quattro rally car and more modern all-wheel drive luxury sedans and SUVs, will “spread out” the launch of new electric vehicles as it takes a step back from its ambitious electrification plan.
“We first looked at what order and density of launches the organization could handle,” Audi CEO Gernot Dollner said in an interview at the company’s headquarters in Ingolstadt, Germany, quoted by Bloomberg. “In the end, we decided to spread it out to not overwhelm the team and the dealerships.”
Specifically, the Audi Q6 e-tron, the first new EV to be based on the Volkswagen Group’s Premium Platform Electric (PPE) architecture–ahead of the Porsche Macan EV–will go into production in the second quarter of next year. 2024 will also be the year when another EV will go into production, as well as two new combustion models. A third ICE vehicle is planned for 2025, but there’s no word on any other EV.
Audi plans to launch 20 new models by 2026, with half of them fully electric, but going by what we know now, that goal seems almost impossible to achieve.
The German marque’s CEO chose his words wisely, saying that the company doesn’t want to overwhelm factories, but the fact of the matter is that Audi’s electric car sales performance has been less than stellar.
True, in the previous quarter of this year, the Ingolstadt-based manufacturer saw sales of its EVs double in the United States, but that’s not the whole picture. In Q3, Audi sold a little over 7,500 battery-powered cars Stateside and fewer than 18,000 in the first nine months.
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By comparison, longtime rival BMW sold 13,000 EVs just in Q3 and 31,000 in the first nine months of 2023. Mercedes-Benz was also ahead of Audi with roughly 10,500 EVs sold in Q3 and almost 30,000 in the first three quarters.
The maker of the Q8 e-tron is the latest automaker to slow down its EV ambitions, after names like Ford and General Motors, citing a growth slump, rising interest rates, and generally unfriendly market conditions. By contrast, Hyundai Motor Group and Rivian, among others, are expecting a rise in their ability to push more volume in the coming months.
