Audi finance and legal boss Arno Antlitz has confirmed that the brand's model cycles will remain at six-to-seven years, despite the increasing costs of electric cars.
Audi has confirmed that its research-and-development costs will rise from the current 5-6% of revenue to 6-7% in 2021 and beyond.
Antlitz told Autocar: “From today’s perspective, we don’t expect a change in that logic: Every six or seven years, we will see a new car. In between, we will get the major product updates.
"But on the other hand, you're quite right: this has to be financed. And there comes the unique strength of the Volkswagen Group and also Audi. We can use platforms across different brands.”
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The cost savings that the platforms yield is a useful tool for the Volkswagen Group to have. Audi uses both the PPE and MEB platforms for its electric cars, for the E-tron GT and Audi E-tron respectively, and the economies of scale are clear given the numbers of cars being produced.
Antlitz said: “We use the PPE platform together with Porsche in the B-, C- and D-segment, where we will see 7,000,000 cars over the lifetime [of the platform].”
This allows Audi to “scale electromobility very efficiently and at the same time keep the cars fresh and new, and stick to that six-or-seven-year product cycle.”
It’s not just the hardware that will need updating. Audi’s director of sales and marketing, Hildegard Wortmann, said: “We're what I would call the platform champions, but the same principle applies to the software platforms. So we have the [firm’s] software organisation where we bundle all our competencies and manpower into the software development. We all know how important that is. It’s success-critical to have the right resources bundled. [With this] we have the chance to update the car more frequently to go into over-the-air updates and play on the whole digital side.”
She added: “The platform thinking and the platform concept really enables us to be very cost-efficient, while at the same time allowing the customer more updates and contemporary stuff in the car than ever before.”
Audi is currently preparing to launch its next EV - the Q4 E-tron - and promises a total of seven electric cars within its range by the end of 2021. That figure will jump to more than 20 by 2025, as Wortmann explained: “There will be many more [electric cars] coming. We will take it step by step, but it’s important for us to offer electrified Audis across all of our segments.”
Wortmann explained Audi's reasoning for the E-tron GT and Q4 E-tron being the next electrified cars, bringing the total number of Audi EV models to six.
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