Only BYD can save Audi?

Produced by Tiger Sniff Car Group

Author|Li Wenbo

Edit|thoughtful

Head image | Weibo

In 1988, when German Audi and China's FAW signed the "Technology Transfer License Contract for the Production of Audi in FAW" in Changchun, the Ingolstadt, Germany-based car company must not have imagined that after lying "counting" banknotes in China for thirty-five years, it would start to take money out of its own pocket and pay it to Chinese brands.

According to German media Automobilwoche, Audi, which has never been able to find a breakthrough in the field of pure electric vehicles, is trying to seek external help to shorten its model development time and improve product competitiveness, among which one of the most effective ways is to buy a ready-made pure electric platform from its Chinese competitor and directly build it.

And, according to sources close to Audi, Volkswagen CEO Oliver Blume, who took office only last September, has already approved the outsourcing project.

Volkswagen CEO Oliver Blume

The Tongji University doctor of vehicle engineering just finished out Audi's current CEO Marcus Audi late last month. Markus Duesmann, with whom he will work for 30 years, Volkswagen Group Vice President Product and Group Strategy Gnot G. Gernot Dollner secured the throne.

This kind of operation of "pulling out the system with the left hand and taking out the money with the right hand" is somewhat incomprehensible.

In the era of fuel vehicles, the German luxury car standard-bearer who engraved the four words "positive development" on the door of his head actually embarked on the old road of "take-ism" that Chinese brands were most familiar with in the past without looking back in the era of electric vehicles.

In fact, this is not the first time Audi has wanted to learn something from a Chinese brand.

In November last year, FAW Audi R&D Center welcomed perhaps the most distinguished "guest" since the center was built, Wang Chuanfu, chairman and president of BYD Co., Ltd., and the team of technical engineers led by him of Verdy Power.

In a cordial and friendly atmosphere, the two sides had a comprehensive and in-depth exchange of views on the adaptation results of blade batteries and DM-i power systems, and reached a series of important consensuses, that is, FAW Audi plans to purchase BYD's DM-i/DM-p power systems for use in some mainstream models in 2023.

Translated into human terms, it is:

If the "Didi marriage" does not come out with a moth, then the domestic Audi A4L that will come off the production line in the future will no longer be pasted with 40 TFSI and 45 TFSI tail labels, but will be reposted with DM-i and DM-p of the same origin as BYD. If the relationship between the two parties is stable, it is only a matter of time before the domestic Q5L is affixed with DM-i and DM-p tail labels.

Unfortunately, halfway through 2023, the Audi A4L DM-i does not even have a shadow of a spy car. It can be seen that even if it is as strong as BYD, if you want to do business with the public, you can only follow the rules of the game that "people under the Wolf Castle have to bow their heads".

In half a year, the industry aircraft carrier twice and Chinese brands in the field of electric vehicles have had "scandals", indicating that today's Audi is not in a hurry.

Instead, panicked.

In doing, progress 0%

You may not believe it, but as one of the most profitable brands in the Volkswagen Group, Audi has not unified its pure electric car platform internally until today. Although Audi has released the first pure electric concept car named after the e-tron at the Frankfurt Motor Show in Germany on September 16, 2009, fifteen years have passed, and the pure electric car created by Audi is still a hammer in the east and a stick in the west.

Within Volkswagen, there are four electric vehicle manufacturing platforms, namely:

MEB platform: the most well-known public ID. Series electric vehicles are produced on this platform. Audi's entry-level electric vehicles, such as the Q4 e-tron, are also products of the MEB platform;

MLB evo platform: At the root, this is a fuel truck platform. SUV models from the Lamborghini, Bentley, Porsche brand and medium and large cars from the Audi brand are all derived from the MLB evo platform. The platform also gave birth to a much-criticized "oil-to-electricity" - Audi e-tron;

PPE platform: pure electric platform jointly developed by Porsche and Audi for medium and large sedans and SUVs, pure electric Macan, Cayenne; Both the Audi A6e-tron and Q6 e-tron will be produced on this platform. Its Changchun plant in China is under construction and is expected to be completed and commissioned by the end of 2024;

J1 high-performance electric platform: developed by Porsche, upgraded from the MSB fuel platform, mainly used in production

Taycan

Class of high-performance electric vehicles, Iron Man cars Audi e-tronGT, RS e-tronGT are produced on this platform. But embarrassingly, after the J1 platform produced these two cars, the mission of "transition man" ended, and the second-generation Porsche Taycan and Audi e-tronGT will be transferred to the PPE platform.

Enough mess, right? No, it's not over.

In 2021, then Volkswagen Group CEO Herbert Diess announced that he would launch an SSP (Scalable Systems Platform) integrated platform to replace the existing MQB, MEB, J1 and PPE platforms. In 2025, Audi will mass-produce Artemis, the first model of the SSP platform; In 2026, a new Volkswagen electric flagship car codenamed "Trinity" will be built on the SSP platform; By 2030, Volkswagen's electric vehicles based on the SSP platform will reach 40 million units.

With the incompetence of Volkswagen's CARIAD software department coupled with the double debuff of Diess being forced to "graduate" early, the prospects of the SSP platform have cast a thick shadow, from the initial postponement to 2029 to 2030. Imagine if the SSP platform is only developed in 2030, then the Artemis production car can have a core media tasting in 2032, even if the Audi ancestral grave is smoking.

Fortunately, after Obermu took over, he pressed the super accelerator key for the development of the SSP platform. According to the latest plan, Audi will launch the Q6 e-tron pure electric SUV based on the PPE platform next year, using the new version 1.2 software, which is one year later than the original plan for 2023. The original release timeline for the SSP platform for 2026 remains unchanged.

For Audi, 2026 is "pretty early". But for Chinese car companies, next month is "too late". According to such a speed difference, by 2026, the moment Audi mass-produced cars roll off the production line, the generational gap between the products of Chinese car companies may already be more than one generation.

As the second "person who understands" within the Volkswagen Group after Herbert Diess, Oberme admitted at the Volkswagen Group investor conference in June, "The Audi brand has great potential, but in recent years it has lagged behind its competitors. Because of software problems, Audi had to postpone the planning of the electric car. Moreover, Audi's current pure electric vehicle products are not competitive in the Chinese market. ”

This lack of competitiveness, the most direct projection, is weak sales.

In China, Audi is selling pure electric models such as the Q2L e-tron, Q4 e-tron, Q5 e-tron, e-tron Sportback, e-tron GT quattro, RS e-tron GT. According to the statistics of the passenger association, in the first five months of this year, only 6631 units of the Q4 e-tron were sold; The Q5 e-tron sold 1501 units; The e-tron sold 170 units, while the Q2L e-tron had only 70 units.

This achievement, in total, does not sell more than the new forces of Chinese car manufacturing in a month.

Does it have to be Dizi?

Internal R&D results have not been implemented, the market is changing rapidly, and the only thing left to do is to spend a lot of money on mature platforms. Although it cannot be done once and for all, at least get through the current difficulties first.

According to Zhang Junyi, managing partner of Oliver Wyman and head of automotive and industrial products in Greater China, Audi's turn to Chinese electric vehicle companies is "the trend of the times".

"Audi is not the first foreign brand to use the Chinese electric vehicle platform, previously class-like luxury brands such as

Volvo

、

smart

、

Polestar

, all used

lucky

Platform. As for which platform Audi will buy, it depends on whether the two sides can share win-win development. Zhang Junyi told Tiger Sniff.

In a poll on Weibo titled "Whose platform is Audi most likely to buy", BYD e platform 3.0 was the option with the highest public's voice, ranking second

Zhiji

The SAIC Nebula platform, the third is the Geely Haohan platform.

In the author's opinion, although Audi's choice is not explicitly stated, it has actually been announced to the world, after all, "one stroke can not write two Di characters", do not choose BYD, what else is there to choose?

We must clarify that Audi's goal in purchasing China's electric vehicle platform is to increase the Audi brand's market share in China's new energy vehicle market in the shortest time and speed. To put it more bluntly, Audi needs an explosive model that explodes when it lands and goes out of stock when it comes off the production line.

Expensive electric vehicles, relying on the existing appeal of the Audi brand in the field of electric vehicles, obviously cannot achieve this goal in the short term. Not to mention, Audi's production cars from its own high-end PPE platform will be sold next year.

So, this must be a mid-size sedan or SUV for the mainstream consumer market, priced between 150,000 and 250,000, 800V high-voltage platform, and supports overcharging. Based on this conventional logical reasoning, BYD e Platform 3.0 is almost the only answer. In addition, the FAW Fodi new energy power battery project plant jointly established by FAW Group and BYD is about to be delivered at the end of August, which has raised the credibility of the "Audi + BYD" rumors to a higher level.

However, there is also an unconventional logic that Audi "does not want to obey" and takes the initiative to break out of the inherent circle of two joint ventures, FAW and SAIC, and expand the scope of investigation to the entire Chinese auto industry. That has proved its Geely SEA vast structure in the four price ranges of low, medium, high and luxury, and the winning surface is greater.

However, regardless of whether the final choice is BYD or Geely, Audi will face the fate of becoming a "OEM" factory, and this new set of building (live) cars (life) formula is: Audi out of the shell interior, BYD or Geely out of the platform, three electricity, intelligent driving, software, production line.

Such an electric car based on a highly localized idea must be more suitable for Chinese taste than the electric car imagined by Ingolstadt, and it may become the best-selling electric car in the history of the Audi brand, which makes Obomu and the board of directors feel relieved and smile.

The only thing that saddened the Germans was that there was no "Audi flavor" on this car except for the four circles of the logo.

Write at the end

Although the time has traveled to 2023, such a tone still exists firmly, that is: Audi to find Chinese car companies to buy electric vehicle platforms, belongs to the "self-lowering segment" and will be

Benz

、

Bmw

Delete moments directly.

The way to live is almost blocked, who cares if the circle of friends is not the circle of friends.

For Audi, which has never been sure about the pulse of China's new energy vehicle market, letting a car company more familiar with Chinese be responsible for building cars, and being responsible for OEM and counting money is the real way to make the original soup and the original food.

Of course, if Audi feels that it is still too expensive to buy a platform from a Chinese car company, it is better to buy Xpeng, a Chinese car company, directly, which can save a lot of money.