The Rise of EV – What is the Future of Audi & Volkswagen?

With recent news on Tesla finally offering their mid $30,000 models (tax incentives in this price) what does this mean for other auto makers including Audi as more and more electric vehicles hit the roads.

We all remember dieselgate with VW and not to mention the battle in California now over exhausts and the modification of them. Will all of the bad press coupled with increasing legislature towards gasoline engines be enough where more auto manufacturers will make an aggressive leap towards EV?

Right now Audi/VW has made statements their next generation of engine most likely will be the last generation of combustion engine (set to launch in 2026).

With serious cash being put into the EV push such as Amazon’s lead investment into the $700 million funding round of electric vehicle manufacturing “startup” Rivian.

With Amazon making a push into the EV market as either a play at Tesla or to catch up with other tech giants who are dabbling the space (Google, Apple, Intel).

So what does this battle mean for Volkswagen who has been in the auto industry for quite some time?

We recently wrote about Volkswagen Auto Group’s partnership with Ford over truck projects and what that could mean for the future of the company as they form strategic partners. Potentially could be seen as a coalition of sorts against the new comers?

Audi has already this month announced their Tesla Model 3 competitor set to launch in 2023 under its E-Tron GT performance platform. One important thing to note is this A4 sized EV will not share the Q4 e tron’s platform as the upcoming EV crossover will be utilizing VW group’s MEB architecture.

Projected sales of the A4 sized EV are still unknown as we have yet to see if Model 3 take off given that crossovers are still overall outselling sedans.