Neckarsulm, Germany – Get ready for a raft of new models from Audi, as it accelerates away from the ‘Dieselgate’ crisis.
That’s the message from the annual general meeting of the Audi board of management this week, where chairman Rupert Stadler outlined for shareholders the details of the company’s planned strategic transformation.
Five core model ranges will be renewed by the middle of 2018, and by 2019 both the Q8 and Q4 concepts will go into production, along with three new e-tron battery cars.
The focus for 2017, he said, would be on luxury models, with new generations of the A8 and the A7 – the A8 to make its world debut at the first Audi Summit in Barcelona on 11 July, as part of a new presentation format emphasising what it is that makes Audi different.
Two facets of that are myAudi, with which it plans to build a platform for a range of online services, which will also be open for other providers to offer services; that includes its mobility services for urban areas, which it wants to expand to more than 15 markets worldwide by the end of 2020.
And in March of 2017, Audi launched a subsidiary called Autonomous Intelligent Driving GmbH, with which it will be leading the whole Volkswagen group in the development of technology for self-driving cars in urban environments.
Stadler has set an ambitious target: he wants the first small series of cars ready for real-world testing early in the next decade.