Like its parent company, Audi is reportedly planning to invest heavily in electric vehicles as it pivots away from diesel cars.
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According to reports, Audi will be spending one-third of its R&D budget for the electric cars and autonomous driving projects.
Silicon Valley automaker Tesla Motors (TSLA) commands a great deal of attention from investors and media with its battery technology, though it doesn’t yet sell a mainstream electric model, pending rollout of its Model 3 next year. If they had already developed the EV and achieved the goal 25% electric vehicles sales, they would have sold 450,000 electric cars.
In 2015, Audi sold about 1.8 million vehicles worldwide. Tesla has been mulling a sale of a half a million electric cars by 2020 or sooner. Most them are high-end, luxury vehicles and will pit themselves against Tesla’s Model S. Manufacturers are not so keen on developing electric vehicles because the market is making losses.
Audi CEO Rupert Stadler plans to outline details of the new business roadmap to more than 2000 managers at a closed-door conference in Munich this week, the sources said.
An Audi spokesman declined comment.
Customers have, however, been slow to adopt electric cars which have a limited operating range and long recharging times.
Sales of cars with partially or fully electric drivetrains are expected to grow, thanks in part to government incentives.
The Audi sources also told Reuters that the company plan to cutback on conventional combustion and transmission combinations to reduce country-specific variations.
Audi’s parent Volkswagen also announced similar plans in June to spend billions of euros on electric cars to become a leader in green transport by 2025.
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Of the 14,202,024 new cars registered in the European Union and the European Free Trade Association a year ago, only 186,170 were electric vehicles and 234,170 were hybrids, figures from European auto association ACEA show. People also seem to be more into the hybrid vehicle; this is negatively affecting the demand for pure electric vehicles, JATO continued to explain.
