Audi expands electrification plans to 20 BEV by 2025
Audi has refined its electrification roadmap: After the Ingolstadt-based company had already increased its announcement in March from 20 to 30 electrified models by 2025, Audi has now announced that two-thirds of these 30 electrified models will be fully electric.
The brand intends to launch at least three MEB-based models as part of their updated electric offensive. The first vehicles on the PPE architecture developed jointly with Porsche will also be available in the upper segments at the beginning of the next decade.
This illustrates that Audi is planning to focus strongly on synergy potentials within the VW Group when restructuring its portfolio. Plug-in hybrids will also play a far from subordinate role. The Ingolstadt-based company also intends to intensify the development of fuel cell cars, which they are responsible for throughout the Volkswagen Group.
In the course of the Annual General Meeting, Audi not only announced its intention to release 20 fully electric and 10 electrified models by 2025, but has also revised its sales forecast for these vehicles upwards. According to this forecast, the carmaker now expects around 40 per cent of worldwide sales to be electrified by 2025. Against this background, around 14 billion euros are to flow into the future fields of electric mobility, digitization and highly automated driving by 2023, the company confirms. Audi has committed itself to savings targets in a “transformation plan” for counter-financing. The general highlights in the paper include reducing complexity, exploiting synergies and identifying and discontinuing activities that are no longer relevant to customers.
With regard to sustainability, Audi has also set the goal of reducing the CO2 footprint of its vehicle fleet by 30 per cent by 2025 compared with 2015. To this end, all Audi production sites worldwide are to be CO2-neutral by 2025. By 2050 at the latest, the VW subsidiary intends to achieve CO2 neutrality throughout the company.
So far, so good. After the Audi e-tron quattro, the presentation of the Audi e-tron Sportback will follow this year, and in China the Audi Q2L e-tron, specially designed for the local market, will roll off the assembly line. There will also be several plug-in hybrids. First and foremost the Q5 55 TFSI e quattro introduced the day before yesterday, which can be ordered now and will be released in the third quarter of 2019. At the Geneva Motor Show, Audi also announced a whole range of PHEV variants for its A6, A7 Sportback and A8 models. They are to be ordered in the course of the year. The Q7, on the other hand, is not expected as a facelift until the fourth quarter of this year. The next generation of the A3 will come at the beginning of 2020.
In the second half of 2020, the production version of the Audi e-tron GT four-door coupé, which will be produced by Audi Sport GmbH, is scheduled to be unveiled. And the production debut of the compact Audi Q4 e-tron is also to take place simultaneously. Shortly afterwards, battery electric cars from Audi and Porsche will follow on the PPE platform mentioned above. At Porsche, it is already clear that it will be a purely electric version of the Macan. At Audi, the model has not yet been decided upon.
Audi boss Bram Schot revealed further details recently in an interview: “In two or three years at the latest, Audi will be the electrical benchmark,” said Schot. In the next generation, the A8 will probably only be available as an electric model. For the TT sports car, an electric successor “for less than 45,000 euros” is planned.
0 Comments