Audi has started an extremely eventful and ambitious year. At this Wednesday’s 129th Annual General Meeting in Ingolstadt, the Board of Management informs the shareholders about the current course of business, the model and technology initiative, and the objectives of the Action and Transformation Plan as an enabler for the strategy “Audi.Vorsprung.2025.”
As the brand’s first fully electric volume model, the Audi e-tron SUV will have its world premiere at the Audi Summit in Brussels on August 30. With the rapid expansion of the portfolio of fully electric cars and plug-in hybrids in each model range, the company aims to sell approximately 800,000 electrified automobiles per annum by 2025. For the production version of the Audi e-tron prototype, customers will for the first time be able to book various functions flexibly online. In total, the brand aims to generate an annual contribution to operating profit of €1 billion with digital services via the myAudi customer portal by the year 2025.
Audi is installing a central product management unit reporting directly to the CEO to steer the planning, implementation and operation of digital products, and is thus establishing digital value added organizationally at the same level as the existing core business. For this purpose,
Audi is also developing an integrated IT platform for vehicle connectivity and digital services. By means of a shared high-performance backend, the models from Audi and the other brands of the Volkswagen Group will be usable compatibly; this means for example that customers’ settings and content will be smoothly transferred between the automobiles of the various Group brands.
With its successfully started Action and Transformation Plan, Audi aims to achieve positive earnings effects totaling €10 billion by 2022 through reduced costs and new sources of revenue. Audi is systematically prioritizing the resources gained from efficiency progress for innovations with high customer relevance as well as Vorsprung durch Technik in the competitive arena.
In the current financial year, Audi is rejuvenating and expanding its model portfolio with more than 20 new market launches. The new Audi design language and the new, fully digital operating concept in the interior will be introduced in all segments, starting with the premium full-size class. Following the launch of the new A8 in late 2017 and the A7 in March 2018 in first markets, a new top model will come onto the market as of the middle of this year: the new generation of the A6. By 2020, Audi plans to increase its unit sales in the brand-defining full-size segment by about 50 percent. Before the end of this year, the two high-end SUVs, the Q8 and the Audi e-tron, will extend the Four Rings’ product offering in this prestigious segment.
Audi will launch new sporty SUVs also in the compact and midsize segments in 2018, thus significantly strengthening its market position for premium SUVs, for which demand is strong all over the world. In addition to the new Q3 generation, the sporty SQ2* will have its premiere in the coming months. In China, Audi SUVs will be available for the first time as long-wheelbase versions: the Q2 L and the Q5 L. By the end of 2019, Audi will launch a total of eleven new SUVs, including further models without predecessors such as the Audi Q4, which is to be launched next year.
