The new brand AUDI is born, and a new era of joint ventures has arrived.
Audi is comprehensively accelerating its intelligent electric transformation, and has placed a significant bet on SAIC.
On November 7, the new luxury pure electric brand AUDI, a collaboration between Audi and SAIC, was officially unveiled, and the first mass-production concept car, AUDI E Concept, was also publicly presented. The car logo of the new brand AUDI no longer uses Audi's four-ring logo but instead adopts the new logo "AUDI".
At the Guangzhou Auto Show on November 15, AUDI, as a new member of the Audi family, participated with its first AUDI E concept car, along with the new Audi Q6L e-tron, Audi Q6L Sportback e-trone, and the new Audi A5L Limousine. At the same time, Zheng Qinwen, the women's singles tennis champion of the Paris Olympics, appeared at the auto show as the first brand spokesperson of the new brand AUDI.
Audi has been operating in China for 36 years, and AUDI is its first new automotive brand. This is a common practice for current automotive giants in the intelligent electric vehicle market, using a new brand to carry new technological products and business operation concepts. The AUDI brand has the same pronunciation as the Audi brand but uses letters as its logo, which implies more youthfulness and technology, and also shows the pioneering and intelligent brand tone of the new brand AUDI.
According to public information, the AUDI brand is jointly created by Audi and SAIC and is a new brand focused on the Chinese market. Among them, Audi is mainly responsible for advantageous projects such as exterior design and chassis transmission mechanical quality, while SAIC is responsible for the research and development of electronic and electrical architectures, intelligent cockpits, and intelligent driving.
The intelligent electric transformation is a long-standing proposition for established automotive companies in the Chinese market. For this reason, many automotive companies are willing to invest billions or build their own research and development teams, or layout the upstream and downstream industrial chains, showing a firm determination for transformation.
However, no matter which path is chosen, the transformation of layout achievements into products requires time and faces uncertainties. Audi has chosen a more efficient way, that is, under the existing joint venture model, leveraging the existing resources of its local Chinese partners to achieve the integration of technology and the industrial chain and quickly bring products to the market.
It is reported that the first mass-production model of AUDI will be officially launched next year. The new car uses an 800V architecture, is equipped with a dual-motor four-wheel drive, has a combined system power of 570 kilowatts, a CLTC cruising range of more than 700 kilometers, and can increase the cruising range by 370 kilometers with a 10-minute charge.
If the launch of end-to-end intelligent driving is taken as a milestone, 2025 will be a year of comprehensive competition in intelligent electrification. That is to say, Audi can quickly launch its first product through cooperation with SAIC and timely enter the battlefield. This is already quite rapid in the rhythm of multinational automotive companies.
Leveraging Chinese partners to achieve a more thorough intelligent electric transformation and taking root in the Chinese market may be the core mission of the new brand AUDI. And the cooperation combination of Audi quality and SAIC technology will also become a new paradigm for the transformation of luxury car brands.
The Birth of the New Brand AUDI and the Arrival of a New Era of Joint Ventures
Audi's pursuit of electrification has a long history.
In 2018, Audi launched its first mass-produced pure electric vehicle, the Audi e-tron, based on the MLB evo platform. Public reports show that the MLB evo platform was originally an oil vehicle platform that supported SUV models of Lamborghini, Bentley, Porsche, and mid-to-large-sized vehicles of the Audi brand. Therefore, the first Audi e-tron is also an electric vehicle product developed based on this oil vehicle platform.
In 2019, the Audi e-tron and the Q2L e-tron specially designed for the Chinese market entered the Chinese market. At that time, the subsidized price of the e-tron was as high as 692,800 - 828,600 yuan. While the subsidized price of the other Q2L e-tron was 226,800 - 237,300 yuan. Both faced problems such as overly high prices or insufficient cruising range.
Therefore, Audi further accelerated its electric transformation speed and released the "Audi China Progressive 2030 Strategy" in 2021, focusing the transformation topics on three areas: promoting the electrification process, creating a digital ecosystem including charging and autonomous driving, and measuring the company's performance with ESG standards to promote sustainable growth.
Subsequently, Audi successively launched the domestic e-tron, whose battery is equipped with a ternary lithium battery from CATL, and the cruising range has increased to 500 kilometers, and the price is more than 100,000 yuan cheaper than the imported version. The product strength has rapidly increased.
But at the same time, the competition rhythm in the Chinese market is also accelerating. Self-owned brands' products with the same configuration have quickly achieved price reductions and are equipped with more intelligent functions.
In particular, the end-to-end intelligent driving led by Tesla has become popular in China. New car-making companies and cross-border automotive companies with a technology background are competing to increase resource investment, promote intelligent driving technologies such as urban navigation, and quickly occupy the user mindset in the mid-to-high-end market.
Audi's "Audi China Progressive 2030 Strategy" also inevitably needs a new answer. Investing in or introducing domestic technology suppliers is a common solution in the industry. However, it inevitably faces problems such as uncertainty in product implementation and uncontrollable costs.
In the current product competition, it has entered the competition of cost control in the entire industrial chain. A single-point layout is far less efficient than an overall integration. Therefore, the cooperation between Audi and SAIC to jointly launch the new brand AUDI emerged.
According to official information, in May this year, Audi signed a cooperation agreement with SAIC Group and SAIC Volkswagen to further strengthen local cooperation.
Audi will jointly develop a new platform focused on the Chinese market with SAIC Group - the "Advanced Digitized Platform", and build a new generation of high-end intelligent connected vehicle models based on this platform. The first batch of models will be three pure electric models covering the B-class and C-class vehicle segments, and the first model will be launched in 2025.
It is reported that although the main characters of this cooperation remain the same, the form of cooperation has been greatly different. In the past joint venture automotive companies, the focus was often on the mass production and introduction of vehicle models. In the new brand AUDI, Audi has entrusted SAIC with the core digital intelligent technology, electric technology, electronic and electrical architecture, as well as platform development and supply chain of the entire vehicle, while Audi itself is responsible for product design, chassis engineering, as well as supply chain and product quality control.
This "new joint venture model" is not difficult to understand. In the past decade or so, SAIC, as a leading enterprise in self-owned automotive companies, has undergone tempering in the wave of intelligent electrification in China and has a complete layout in areas such as intelligent driving, digital cockpits, power batteries, and even the new generation of centralized electronic and electrical architectures.
SAIC has independently developed the SOA (Software as a Service) technical architecture. Its strategically invested intelligent driving company, Momenta, has become a leading technology company in the industry. SAIC has also established a joint venture with CATL and has become one of the top 5 passenger vehicle customers of CATL. At the same time, its subsidiary Huayu has also become a core supplier of Tesla.
That is to say, in the field of intelligent electrification, SAIC has built a "technical and industrial pond with rich fish resources", and the new brand AUDI only needs to pick out the "fish" it needs from it.
Behind the new brand AUDI is the "technology + quality" combination of SAIC and Audi, which is likely to become the most efficient path for multinational automotive companies to achieve intelligent electrification in China.
Why Is the New Brand AUDI Needed?
Technology, cost, and speed are the three most core elements in the current competition in the Chinese intelligent electric vehicle market.
Under the past development processes and cross-regional working models of multinational automotive companies, the new vehicle development cycle often exceeds 40 months. However, in the current Chinese market, the new vehicle development cycle has been shortened to 24 months or even 18 months. New products are emerging one after another. In 2024, more than 400 new vehicles were launched in the Chinese market.
At the same time, one of the cores of intelligent electric vehicles is software technology. In the software field, the Chinese market has an abundant and mature pool of engineer talents. After Volkswagen reached a strategic cooperation with XPeng Motors in China, it has sent a hundred engineers to XPeng for "training", with the main task of learning electronic and electrical architecture technology development.
In such an environment, if the R & D source and rhythm of multinational automotive companies still come from the headquarters, it will inevitably be difficult to adapt to the competition rhythm of the Chinese market.
Oliver Blume, CEO of Volkswagen Group, has publicly stated that the Audi brand has great potential in electrification, but it has not been able to translate into specific products in recent years. At the same time, he also believes that Audi is also facing software problems, which has led to the continuous delay of its electric product launch plans.
Through cooperation with SAIC, Audi can make up for these shortcomings and speed up the product launch plan.
Looking at the time node when the AUDI brand launches its first vehicle next year, from the confirmation of the cooperation to the launch of the first vehicle, it takes only 2 years, and two more products will be continuously launched later, which is on par with the product launch rhythm of Chinese automotive companies. This is also a key foundation for Audi to maintain its competitiveness in the market and continue to exert its strength.
At the same time, through the vehicle-level development cooperation with SAIC, AUDI will quickly enjoy the efficiency and cost benefits of the Chinese industrial chain. In the products of SAIC's mid-to-high-end brand IM Motors, the electric vehicle products equipped with lidar and urban intelligent driving functions can be priced down to the 200,000-yuan level, helping the company achieve a monthly sales of nearly 10,000 units.
The era of intelligent electric vehicles is also an era of redefining and pricing the industrial chain. Multinational automotive companies need a long period of resource investment and time to re-establish a complete industrial chain, which is too slow to cope with the current market competition. Undoubtedly, leveraging the existing achievements of partners is the best choice to catch up with the mainstream market rhythm.
In addition, the rapid product iteration has also led to the update and iteration of new technologies and product concepts. The 800V electric vehicle architecture adopted by the new AUDI vehicles has only just emerged two years ago and is now booming in the market. The fast charging technology that can increase the cruising range by 370 kilometers with a 10-minute charge has also been fully mass-produced since the beginning of this year and is about to become a standard capability of mid-to-high-end electric vehicles.
The rhythm of intelligent driving is updated on a monthly basis. Half a year ago, automotive companies were still competing in "intelligent driving that can be used nationwide", and today, the "end-to-end" and other AI-based R & D paradigms have become the new technical competition anchors.
Today, the large battery hybrid has become a new consensus in the electrification product. With the low-cost battery industrial chain and fast charging technology, automotive companies can achieve a pure electric cruising range of 200 kilometers or more for plug-in hybrid models. Combined with 4C rate charging, it can provide a smooth and economical electric experience. At the same time, configuring a simpler-structured range extender can balance the cost and solve the cruising range shortcoming of electric vehicles.
AUDI brand can keep pace with the most cutting-edge capabilities in the market through cooperation with SAIC in these capabilities and product perceptions.
The characteristics of the current automotive market competition are a fast pace and high intensity, which also tests the comprehensive capabilities of an automotive brand from technology, industry, products to sales and service systems. A slight deviation may lead to a huge error. The new brand AUDI is Audi's clear determination to participate in the competition in the Chinese market and also a crucial move to take root in the Chinese market.
The "AUDI + Audi" Dual Brands, Deeply Cultivating the Chinese Market
For today's multinational automotive companies, a proposition always tests the decision-makers. In this largest automotive market in the world, although the competition is fierce and the price wars are intense, it is a position that cannot be given up and must be firmly held.
Moreover, the global sales and profits of multinational automotive companies are still considerable. That is to say, there are still sufficient ammunition and time to deal with regional competitions. This is also the strategic starting point of multinational automotive brands such as Audi in the Chinese market today.
In addition to resources, the opportunities for multinational automotive brands still lie in their heritage and traditions. Audi, which has been established for 114 years, is no exception. Its understanding of the automotive industry, brand building, and the pursuit of quality and design are still the most core competitive elements in the automotive market.
According to 36Kr's understanding, for mid-to-high-end automotive products, brand and design will stably occupy two places in the top three purchasing decisions. This is also the advantage area of century-old brands such as Audi.
Therefore, Audi will move forward simultaneously under the dual-brand strategy of "Audi and AUDI".
It is reported that around the Audi brand, Audi is currently working with FAW-Volkswagen to produce locally-built models based on the PPE luxury pure electric platform. This includes the Audi Q6L e-tron and Audi Q6L Sportback e-tron that were showcased at this year's Guangzhou Auto Show.
Audi FAW New Energy Automotive Co., Ltd. in Changchun will officially start production of pure electric models based on the PPE platform by the end of this year, and the Audi Q6L e-tron series will be the first batch of models.
Around the AUDI brand, Audi will also give full play to its design, product, and engineering advantages, and jointly with partners, launch highly competitive products. Just as Fermín Soneira, CEO of the Audi-SAIC cooperation project, said: "We will integrate Audi's professional experience in the automotive field with local innovation and strive to create products that exceed consumers' expectations."
Audi's design level has been clearly presented in the concept car AUDI E Concept.
In the exterior part, the front face contour of the AUDI E Concept is simple, and the headlights use a hidden style that echoes with the black ring-shaped trim panel.
In the rear part, the roof spoiler and the roof use an integrated design, giving a strong sense of sportiness.
The interior is also a new design. The overall shape of the steering wheel and the center console continues the simple style. At the same time, a continuous large screen is used, which also echoes the cockpit concept that the current intelligent electric vehicles are pursuing.
