Audi and Porsche could build cars in the US

Audi and Porsche have so far only produced outside the US – Porsche even only in Europe. Although Audi has a plant in Mexico, US President Trump’s impending tariffs are also aimed at the two neighbouring countries north and south of the United States. So Audi would not be able to sell even the Q5 (incl. PHEV) and, in future, the Q8 e-tron duty-free in the US. Neither could Porsche with its production facilities in Stuttgart, Leipzig and Bratislava.

As the German Handelsblatt newspaper writes, citing several people familiar with the matter, the Group is looking to change that and make Audis and Porsches in the United States. However, the when and how are not set in stone, and various scenarios are on the table.

One plan envisages Audi and Porsche jointly building very large electric SUVs based on the Scalable Systems Platform (SSP) by the end of the decade – but no further details on capacities or a potential location are given. Another opportunity to localise Volkswagen’s premium brands in the US would be via the Scout brand. In South Carolina – Scout’s new home – there have long been rumours that the two Scout electric pick-ups already announced could be joined by an Audi model, which runs in Ingolstadt under the internal code name ‘Hardqore.’ The plant has been under construction since February 2024, with production of the Scout scheduled to start at the end of 2026. The plant is designed for 200,000 cars per year.

“The most likely scenario among insiders is an expansion of the VW plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee,” says Handelsblatt. The plant still has capacity for expansion (including the neighbouring supplier park), which would probably also be needed: The plant has a capacity of 200,000 vehicles and, most recently, 150,000 units of the combustion model Atlas and 25,000 units of the MEB electric ID.4 were built there. Audi and Porsche would probably use a different platform, but would probably also produce large electric SUVs in the United States – regardless of the actual plant location.

The report does not clearly state when a decision will be made. There is a simple reason for this: the Group wants to wait for the final regulation. How exactly the possible to probable tariffs will be structured and how high they will be is likely to have a significant influence on the decision on models, unit numbers and plant allocations.

Discussions about US production are nothing new, especially at Audi. The German premium competitors Mercedes (Tuscaloosa, Alabama) and BMW (Spartanburg, South Carolina) have been producing the SUV models that are in demand there for the global market in the US for many years – with combustion and electric drives. They would thus be far less affected by possible import tariffs than the two VW brands. According to the Handelsblatt article, the rating agency Moody’s estimates that a tariff of ten per cent on car imports from Europe could cost the VW Group around ten per cent of its operating profit – ‘as particularly high-margin models would be affected’.

The construction of a plant for electric cars in the US was already being discussed within Audi in 2022 – at that time, however, it was not about the threat of tariffs, but rather the subsidy rules of the Inflation Reduction Act. In October 2022, the then Board Member for Development, Oliver Hoffmann, stated that a decision would be made in early 2023 – a multi-brand plant for the Group was also under discussion. As Audi never started building a US factory, Ingolstadt obviously decided against US production at the time.

handelsblatt.com (in German)