Audi is to stop production of the electric car Q8 e-tron for some time. And it might cost the life of an entire car factory. Now the brand is investing massively in hybrid cars.
– We are currently seeing a negative trend for electric cars, but there is still growth, it's just that the pace has decreased.
That's what Gernot Döllner, managing director at Audi, says in a new interview for Autocar .
However, the market for electric cars is not growing so fast that Audi dares to drop the internal combustion engine altogether. On the contrary, the German car brand is now investing massively in both diesel and petrol cars with hybrid assistance.
Audi had otherwise previously sworn that it must be completely finished with combustion engines from Ingolstadt by 2033 at the latest. Similar to the new ones from a number of competitors – including Mercedes and Volkswagen – that goal seems to be wavering significantly now.
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At Audi, they will therefore throw money at technology that can make the battery part of hybrid cars cover 100 kilometers on a charge alone. It depends, among other things, on together with the fact that consumers, aka drivers, are not where Audi had expected.
However, Gernot Döllner claims that Audi has been able to see the writing on the wall for a long time. Namely that many drivers do not want to switch to an electric car.
– Within the Volkswagen Group, we realized early on that hybrids are important, and now we see that the bridge to electric cars is longer than we first thought, says the director, who has only had his job for a year.
The long ranges may be the car manufacturers' response to the strictures of the WLTP norm for fuel economy, which all car manufacturers in the EU must go through. The current norm may well eradicate the hybrid car as early as 2027. Read more about it here .
The first model with Audi's new hybrid technology, which will however be shared across the Volkswagen group, is the new A5, which was presented a few days ago. A car that does away with the A4 model.
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