Audi e-tron SUV to launch in August 2018

Audi is eyeing to sell 800,000 electrified vehicles per year by 2025. The company's ambitious game plan will kick off with the launch of the e-tron SUV in August 2018, followed by three more fully electric vehicles by 2020. 

Audi may still be battling with the ghosts of the past – remember dieselgate? – but the Ingolstadt-based auto maker is poised to create a clean and bright future for the brand. In what can be termed as a major announcement, Audi is aiming to sell as much as 800,000 electrified vehicles per year by 2025. According to the firm, Audi will have 20 new electrified vehicles – a majority of which will be electric and only a small proportion will be plug-in hybrids – in its portfolio in the next 7 years. Further, Audi’s grand electrification plans will have each model series in the line-up have an electrified variant. Audi is betting so high on its future electric vehicles that it even claims that the company will ‘enable about every third customer to decide in favour of an e-model’ by the middle of the next decade.

The proceedings for Audi’s zero-emissions motoring will kick off with the market launch of the e-tron SUV in August 2018. The e-tron SUV will become Audi’s first ever fully-electric production vehicle upon its launch. In 2019, it’ll be joined by e-tron Sportback, which will be followed by the arrival of the Audi e-tron GT and a compact electric vehicle in 2020. By 2025, Audi is planning to spend close to 40 billion euros on e-mobility, autonomous driving and digitization, including that in production.

Audi’s future plans will, of course, see the automaker benefit from its parent brand Volkswagen's Modular Electric Toolkit modular system – albeit that’ll be limited to the compact segment. For bigger and more premium products, Audi is already working with Porsche so as to reduce the development costs substantially.

At the moment, though, Audi’s main focus will be to make a solid first impact with the upcoming e-tron SUV. And from what we’ve learned so far, the e-tron is going to have all the quintessential Audi traits, clubbed with the performance and efficiency – the e-tron will have a range of 400km – that’ll match its main rivals, namely Tesla Model X and Jaguar I-Pace.