Audi To Begin Development Of More Electric Vehicles

Audi will aim to have electric cars account for a quarter of their sales by the year 2025. While this is due in part to fallout from the recent emissions scandal that centered around Audi's parent company, Volkswagen, it is also a shot across the bow of Tesla. The U.S.-based electric car maker has struggled to meet production quotas lately, so VW and Audi see this as a chance to gain an edge in the luxury electric car market.

Audi has been slow to develop their own electric vehicle (EV), as have many of the German luxury auto makers, with the exception of BMW.  LMC Automotive found that BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Audi rank 12, 14, and 22 respectively on the list of annual electric car sales. They trail Toyota, Honda, Lexus, and Nissan.

Low gas prices in the U.S. have led to more demand for pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles, which has hurt sales of hybrids and alternative fuel vehicles. Sales in Eurpoe have also gone stagnant due to some governments offering fewer incentives and the lack of an important, exciting vehicle launch for quite some time. 

Now, Audi is gunning to develop that exciting new vehicle. The VW brand will be investing a third of it's research and development budget into designing and developing their own EV, as well as in autonomous driving. They plan on achieving this by cutting back on their internal combustion car program and standardizing they types of engines and transmissions they use in each model, rather than using different variants of engines in different countries.

According to Reuters, last year  Audi spent 4.2 billion euros ($4.6 billion) on R&D. Only two of the brands 50 models are electric or semi-electric, and they are beginning to take orders for a third - the Q7 e-tron plug-in hybrid.