Audi engineers working on electric car that will challenge Tesla vehicles
Audi plans to roll out an electricpowered crossover in 2017 to challenge Tesla Motors for wealthy, environmentally conscious consumers.
The new model will mark Audi’s first mainstream allelectric vehicle and is part of a push to roll out greener cars. Next year, Audi will introduce a battery- powered variant of the $ 115,900 R8 sports car, which will follow the start of deliveries of the plug- in hybrid A3 E- Tron hatchback this year.
“Our engineers are working” on an electric car that will meet U. S. regulations for a zeroemission vehicle, chief executive Rupert Stadler said to Bloomberg at a meeting in Berlin. “It’s probably going to be a crossover, but development work is still ongoing.”
Tesla has emerged as a viable competitor to German auto manufacturers in the luxurycar space. The electric- vehicle maker, led by billionaire Elon Musk, plans to start deliveries of the Model X sport- utility vehicle in 2015. The brand had the top score in this year’s Consumer Reports owner- satisfaction survey. Audi ranked third after Porsche, while MercedesBenz was fourth.
Audi, the world’s secondlargest maker of luxury vehicles, expects to sell more than 1.7 million cars this year for the first time. The Volkswagen AG unit aims to surpass No. 1 BMW in sales by the end of the decade and expanding in the U. S. is a key part of that.
Deliveries to American buyers have climbed 15 per cent in 2014 and have already beat the record of 158,061 cars sold last year. Audi is targeting further expansion as it seeks to catch up to BMW and Mercedes.
“Our growth in the U. S. is bound to continue,” said Stadler. “We’re setting our sights on the 200,000 mark and once we’ve reached that we’ll look at the 300,000 mark, whether we get there in 2020, 2022 or 2023, I don’t really mind.”
Cleaner running cars are important to Audi’s strategy as fuel efficiency has become a sign of cutting- edge technology. That image is critical for luxury brands to justify higher prices than mass- market competitors, even if demand for electric cars are tepid.