Audi officially announced in March of this year that it was ceasing all development of internal combustion engines in favor of a wholly electric vehicle-focused strategy. The company’s board chairman Markus Duesmann later announced to German media that starting in 2026, all new Audis would be electric. The schedule for the phase-out of internal combustion engines was also reaffirmed today with the announcement that “new Audi models will be all-electric starting in 2026, and combustion engine manufacture will finish in 2033.”
The proposal was unveiled as part of Audi’s new Vorsprung 2030 credo, which outlines the company’s plans to produce automobiles in a more sustainable manner. The focus shifts from the phase-out of combustion to seeking out those incredibly hot automotive buzzwords, or “synergies,” that will aid the brand in shifting its primary source of revenues from combustion car sales to electric.
Audi’s chief strategist Silja Pieh, together with roughly 500 other personnel from innovation and major markets, including China and the United States, worked on Vorsprung 2030.
The good news is that there will soon be more E-trons. However, Vorsprung 2030 also includes efforts to distinguish Audi’s EVs from those of rivals and other VW brands. Currently, the Porsche Taycan’s core technology is used in all E-tron vehicles. In order to create a distinctive Audi feel, Audi plans to consider future aspects such as “steering angle requirements, hand torque, and acoustics.”
It goes without saying that changing a firm will cost money. “We must and will indeed free up the proper financial resources to address a transition such as the one Audi is presently facing,” said Jrgen Rittenburger, member of the board for finance and legal affairs. The only way to guarantee our long-term viability and competitiveness is to do this.
That entails things like ending Formula E’s enjoyment and a corporate hunt for more intelligent methods to conduct business. Or, as it appears we must do now, “synergies.”
If that’s not exciting, perhaps the future emphasis on Audi maintaining its Vorsprung and seeking to offer distinctively Audi driving experiences will be.
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Will Audi eventually go electric-only?
One of the automaker’s newest battery-powered vehicles is the Audi Q4 Sportback 50 e-tron quattro. Its MEB platform is shared by electric vehicles from the Volkswagen Group, including the VW ID4 and Skoda Enyaq.
Germany According to CEO Markus Duesmann, Audi will expedite its transition to become an electric-only automaker and phase out the production of combustion engines by the early part of the next decade, with the exception of China.
According to a statement released by the carmaker on Tuesday, Audi will exclusively introduce new all-electric cars on the world market beginning in 2026.
According to Duesmann’s statement, “Audi is prepared to make its definitive and strong leap into the electric age.”
Up to 2033, the manufacturer will gradually stop producing internal combustion engines. Audi stated that customers and legislation would ultimately determine when the combustion engine would be phased out.
The statement said, “The firm expects to see ongoing demand in China beyond 2033, which is why there may be a supply of automobiles there using locally produced combustion engines.”
Audi intends to considerably increase the number of fully electric vehicles in its inventory, with the goal of having more than 20 fully electric vehicles available by 2025.
“Audi is already launching more electric cars than models with combustion engines this year,” the statement stated. “These new models include the e-tron GT, RS e-tron GT, Q4 e-tron, and Q4 Sportback e-tron.”
Regarding how its product line may change, Audi did not offer any additional information. Additionally, it omitted mentioning the North American phaseout timeframe for combustion engines.
According to reports in the German media, the Q8, which will debut in 2026 alongside an electric counterpart, the Q8 e-tron, would likely be Audi’s final internal combustion engine vehicle.
The A3 and A4 won’t have replacements with combustion engines; instead, the A3 e-tron and A4 e-tron will take their place. According to the sources, the A5 and A6 models will follow a similar timeline.
Audi stated that it intends to increase the fuel efficiency of current combustion engine automobile generations.
The final internal combustion engine manufactured by Audi will be the best one ever, according to Duesmann. “I do not think that prohibitions are effective. I think that innovation and technology will succeed.”
The Euro 7 tailpipe pollution rules, whose first guideline seemed to make it difficult for the ICE to survive, may have been mentioned in Duesmann’s comment about bans.
He explained via email that premium companies are under more pressure since historically, they have sold vehicles with higher CO2 emissions and because of Tesla’s impending danger. The assertions made by Audi are not surprising given these arguments and the strict future emission limits being implemented in areas like China and Europe.
According to the market, Pacheco predicted that the rate of electrification would vary substantially.
“Offering a fully electric model range in a market where electrification hasn’t yet achieved a significant market share will be the big test to the resolve of each manufacturer towards full electrification,” he said.
Audi has gone further in its transformation to electric-only vehicles than its rival German luxury companies, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, which want to go fully electric after a more careful transition.
Mercedes announced in March that it would quicken the transition to electric vehicles, but it gave no information regarding how quickly its automobile lineup will go electric. By 2030, BMW anticipates selling half of its vehicles as fully electrified vehicles.
By 2030, which automaker will only sell electric vehicles?
In addition to developing the limited-edition Evija all-electric sports car, Lotus wants to be a leading EV brand by 2028.
By 2030, Bentley intends to run exclusively on electricity. By 2026, the brand will only offer electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles.
By 2035, GM promises to only sell electric vehicles. By 2030, Cadillac will set the standard for all-electric vehicles.
After hesitating, Toyota has now made big plans for electric vehicles. One of those plans is for Lexus to go completely electric by 2030 in North America, Europe, and China (and all markets by 2035). And an electric LFA replacement could be coming.
By 2030, will all vehicles be electric?
- According to a recent KPMG study, auto executives think President Joe Biden’s target of having half of new vehicles sold in the U.S. be electric by 2030 is realistic.
- By 2030, executives anticipate that, despite widely varying projections, 52 percent of new car sales will be all-electric.
- Most survey respondents predict that the entry of a wave of new electric vehicle start-ups will have a “modest influence” on the world market.
On November 17, 2021, in Detroit, President Joe Biden makes a speech while touring the General Motors Factory ZERO electric vehicle assembly facility.
According to a new study issued Tuesday by accounting and consulting firm KPMG, automotive executives predict that more than half of their sales will be electric vehicles by 2030, in line with President Joe Biden’s EV sales target.
Executives anticipate that by 2030, 52% of new car sales would be all-electric, despite predictions ranging considerably from more than 20% to over 90%. The survey, which questioned more than 1,100 global automobile executives, predicts the same amount for China and Japan.
Many investors and observers of the industry may find the results surprising. The United States continues to behind other nations, like China, in terms of the adoption of electric vehicles. Major automakers Ford Motor and General Motors only committed to a goal of between 40 percent and 50 percent by 2030 when Biden unveiled the EV sales target in August, which includes counts plug-in electric hybrid vehicles toward the objective.
Automobile forecasters and analysts have also stated that despite their agreement that the industry will adopt electric vehicles quickly, Biden’s target is unlikely to be met.
When will most vehicles be electric?
According to market research firm IHS Markit, by 2035, electric vehicles may account for around 45 percent of new auto sales. By 2050, approximately half of all vehicles on the road would be electric.
What does Audi’s future hold?
The Q8, which will debut in Brussels in 2026 alongside a fully electric variant, the Q8 e-tron, is reportedly Audi’s final internal combustion engine vehicle. The image shows the current Q8.
Germany According to estimates in German media, Audi will cease developing new internal combustion engine models by the end of 2026 and devote all of its attention to fully electric drivetrains.
According to the reports, which cited corporate sources, Audi CEO Markus Duesmann made the announcement during a management meeting on Thursday at the company’s headquarters in Ingolstadt, Germany.
Audi intends to stop making new gasoline, diesel, and hybrid vehicles, although its new models introduced by 2026 will still be produced and sold well into the early 2030s. After that, Audi will only produce electric vehicles.
The A3 and A4 will not be replaced by vehicles powered by combustion engines, but rather by the A3 e-tron and A4 e-tron electric vehicles, according to Automobilwoche. According to German business publication Handelsblatt, Audi’s A5 and A6 models will develop into electric vehicles on a similar schedule.
The Q8, which will debut in 2026 alongside an electric version, the Q8 e-tron, will probably be Audi’s final internal combustion engine vehicle. According to Handelsblatt, which cited unidentified sources within Audi, the internal combustion engine Q8 will thereafter continue to be built until 2032.
When the A6 e-tron fully electric variant arrives on sale in early 2023, Audi has stated that it would be offered alongside the regular A6 versions. A6 e-tron concept vehicle with a 100 kilowatt-hour battery that will enable a range of more than 700 km (435 miles) in production form was unveiled at the Shanghai auto show in April.
It will follow the Q6 e-tron big SUV, which is scheduled to go on sale in the second half of 2022, as the second Audi vehicle to be constructed on the PPE (premium platform electric) architecture created with Porsche.
According to Duesmann, who spoke in March, Audi intends to increase its full-electric lineup to 20 vehicles globally by 2025. By 2030, Audi and Porsche, a sister brand of the Volkswagen Group, intend to sell 7 million vehicles built on the PPE platform.
The e-tron, e-tron Sportback, and e-tron GT are the three current fully electric vehicles from Audi. The MLB Evo platform from Audi serves as the foundation for the e-tron and e-tron Sportback, while the J1 platform from the e-tron GT is shared with the Porsche Taycan.
Mercedes announced in March that it would quicken the transition to electric vehicles, but it gave no information regarding how quickly its automobile lineup will go electric. BMW claims that by 2030, fully electric vehicles will account for 50% of company sales.
As lawmakers in Europe and other important markets enforce stricter emissions regulations to combat climate change and air pollution, several automakers have made concrete plans to switch to all-electric vehicles.
By 2030, Ford stated that it would only sell fully electric passenger vehicles in Europe. Jaguar Land Rover CEO Thierry Bollore announced the brand’s transition to all-electric vehicles starting in 2025. Jaguar is recognized for its high-performance sports cars.
By 2030, according to Volvo, all of its vehicles will be battery-electric. Bentley said in November that it would transition its complete model lineup to all electric vehicles by 2030, doing away with internal combustion engines from all of its automobiles.
Is BMW switching to all-electric vehicles?
BMW hasn’t made the commitment to switch to all-electric vehicles by 2030 like some of its rivals have. However, the German firm is moving in that direction quite quickly. This year sees the debut of the historic i4 sedan and iX crossover. And BMW intends to introduce its first specifically designed EV platform, the so-called “Neue Klasse,” perhaps alongside the new 3 Series, in 2025.
The addition of the electrified Neue Klasse platform to the BMW lineup won’t be a minor one. At some point in the future, it will essentially represent the whole BMW lineup, according to BMW. BMW CEO Oliver Zipse revealed on a quarterly earnings call that the company had abandoned ambitions to make the Neue Klasse compatible with combustion, hybrid, and diesel applications.
When it debuts, it will primarily target the 3-Series market, Zipse said. At that time, the market will have grown to the point where it is reasonable to have just one drivetrain in that design. Later, BMW will extend the platform to include BMW’s smaller and larger vehicles, which should provide more efficient combustion.
The Neue Klasse, according to Zipse, “is (BMW’s) model range for the future.” And he said that BMW was exerting every effort to meet its target of having half of its car sales be electric vehicles by 2030, a goal that at this point seems astonishingly modest.
BMW had been one of the main EV skeptics despite being one of the first manufacturers to enter the EV market with the cutting-edge i3 hatchback. The corporation waited for the market to signal that it was ready for EVs before hedging its bets with hybrid systems. Newly released combustion and electric models of the 7 Series. While competitors like Mercedes, Audi, and Porsche already have dedicated EV platform vehicles on the road, the all-electric Neue Klasse makes its debut in 2025.
A fundamental shift for BMW is its belief that it doesn’t need to rely on internal combustion engines. And it’s simple to understand why they are turning given Tesla’s excellent EV sales numbers and vehicles like the Ford F-15o Lightning in BMW’s price range.
Will there ever be an all-electric vehicle?
The traditionally conservative International Energy Agency has projected that the global stock of EVs will range between 9 million and 20 million by 2020 and between 40 million and 70 million by 2025 as a result of announcements like these and a steady pace of EV policy announcements from governments around the world. As a point of comparison, around 97 million vehicles were sold worldwide in 2017.
Is it possible that a complete switch to EVs will occur in the not-too-distant future given the ambitious EV and hybrid agendas being implemented by the top manufacturers in the world?
What if all cars sold by the year 2040 are electric?
The world as it could appear if fossil-fuel powered cars were phased out by the year 2040 is explored in a new analysis by Jon Berntsen and Frank Melum from the Thomson Reuters Carbon team. The analysis is displayed here in an interactive visualization created by Thomson Reuters Labs. The hypothetical scenario projects the effects of increasing EV adoption on a sliding scale from now to 2050 by substituting current worldwide sales with EVs and using historical passenger car sales trends as a guide. (The complete approach and premises are available here.)
According to the graph, only a minuscule fraction of the nearly 1.3 billion automobiles on the road in 2018 are hybrids and electric vehicles. Around 74 million new gasoline-powered vehicles, 11 million diesels, 2.5 million hybrids, and 1.4 million electric vehicles will be marketed this year. The existing fleet of fossil fuel vehicles emits slightly more than 3 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, and the total amount of electricity required to power that fleet would be close to 13 terawatt hours.
According to the depiction, a change will become apparent by 2025. Sales of new hybrid vehicles reach a peak, and electric vehicles (EVs) gain market share steadily. While carbon dioxide exhaust emissions start to decline and power demand starts to rise, the number of vehicles running on gasoline and diesel starts to decline.
Nearly all major automakers are preparing to switch to electric automobiles, while Europe, China, and India are moving toward outlawing the sale of vehicles that run on fossil fuels. We are also witnessing the apex of the hybrid sales linear growth curve and the actual beginning of the EV sales exponential growth curve. Carbon emissions from transportation decrease as a result, but electricity consumption and grid pressure actually start to increase.
Nearly half of all vehicles on the road by 2040 will still be powered by fossil fuels, but all new cars sold will be electric vehicles (EVs). As a result, the amount of carbon dioxide produced by passenger cars would decrease to 1.7 billion metric tons, but the overall amount of energy needed to power the growing number of electric vehicles on the planet will have increased to roughly 1,350 terawatt hours.
“According to him, the additional electricity demand in 2050 will be in the neighborhood of 3,000 terawatt hours if we assume that all automobiles sold starting in 2040 will be electric. ” In comparison, the European Union currently produces roughly 3,200 terawatt hours. Our current mix of power generation will need to shift significantly as a result of the rising demand.
Renewable energy sources account for over two-thirds of new electricity capacity, with solar accounting for about half. The cost of solar technology is continuously decreasing, and there are now instances where solar energy is more affordable than coal-fired power plants. Clean energy might be used to power the fleet of EVs in the future.