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Audi CEO says brand's EVs are almost as profitable as its other cars

After, oh, a hundred years or so of building vehicles primarily powered by internal combustion engines, automakers around the world have been and still are pumping billions of dollars into the development of electric vehicle technology. Everything from platforms and batteries to motors and the software to control it all requires untold hours of development, and that takes time and money. Fortunately, it's not going to take long for that massive investment to start paying off, at least according to Audi CEO Markus Duesmann, who told Reuters in an interview that "The point where we earn as much money with electric cars as with combustion engine cars is now, or ... next year, 2023. They are very even now, the prices." As a brand, Audi contributed more than a quarter of overall profit for the massive Volkswagen Group, which has such powerhouse brands as Volkswagen and Porsche among others. Under the Audi umbrella are Lamborghini, Bentley and Ducati, and it seems those high-end branches aren't going anywhere, at least for now. "These brands ... are very valuable very profitable brands, where we can even expand the synergy level in the future," Duesmann said in the interview. "There are no plans whatsoever to get rid of them." Despite the overall profitability of the brand, the ongoing global chip crisis is causing headaches. "We had a very strong first half in 2021. We do expect a much weaker second half," said Duesmann, who added, "We really have trouble." In fact, so serious is the trouble that the brand is forced into "a day-to-day troubleshooting process" to limit the chip-shortage damage. The good news for the automaker is that Audi has been able to boost its profit margin from 8% prior to the pandemic in 2019 to 10.7% in the first half of 2021. The bad news is that various chip shortages aren't expected to get a whole lot better over the rest of the year. Related video:

Wolfgang D?rheimer retakes the reins at Bentley and Bugatti

Wolfgang Dürheimer is still in play, with Bentley Motors announcing that he will return to the Chairman and CEO slot of the English company and French division Bugatti on June 1, 2014. He'll probably remember those chairs from the last time he filled them, since he was promoted to both positions in 2010 and remained there until September 2012, when he was installed as the head of R&D at Audi. That job only lasted until June of 2013, his nine-month tenure reported to be full of corporate drama that lead to his dismissal from the position.
But as if on gardening leave, he's been in the low-profile position of General Representative of the Volkswagen Group responsible for motorsport. Once back at Bentley, he will take over as the company works on getting its SUV to market and expanding its range. Both of those briefs Dürheimer will know well, having proved his ability at Porsche in the first decade of the new millennium. And even though no longer at Audi, his hybrid days don't appear to be over, as Bentley recently announced that it will hybridize of 90 percent of its lineup.
Dürheimer will also take on a third position, joining a VW Group committee focused on the US and Chinese markets. His successor at Bentley and Bugatti, Wolfgang Schreiber, has been promoted to "a leading position within the Volkswagen Group." There's a brief press release below with the official words.

How an 18-cylinder engine and the Porsche 917 shaped the Bugatti Veyron

On the surface, Volkswagen's resurrection of Bugatti looks like one of the many chess-like moves made in its bold quest to expand its portfolio of brands during the late 1990s. In a way, it was; branching out into new segments motivated executives to buy a once-venerated French brand that hadn't made a car in years. On a secondary level, the acquisition allowed one man to fulfill his dream of developing the world's most prestigious car. Bugatti opened its archives to tell the story of how its first 21st-century car, the Veyron, was born.  Ferdinand Karl Piech (1937-2019), a brilliant engineer who rose to the top of the Volkswagen Group during a long and illustrious career, sketched out an 18-cylinder engine in 1997, on the back of an envelope, while riding the bullet train between Tokyo and Nagoya. It consisted of three VR6 cylinder banks separated by 60 degrees and tuned to deliver 555 horsepower. The 6.25-liter engine was naturally aspirated and envisioned for high-end luxury cars -- the kind that would make Mercedes-Benz (who also experimented with an 18-cylinder engine) blush. There was one big problem: Volkswagen Group didn't have a suitable car to put it in. Rolls-Royce would have been an option, but BMW unexpectedly ended up with the name (though not the factory nor the Spirit of Ecstasy) after a bitter bidding war. Although Volkswagen had bagged Bentley, Piech set his mind to buying the dormant Bugatti brand, which belonged to Italian entrepreneur Romano Artioli, after Piech's son gave him a model of a Type 57 SC Atlantic while vacationing in Majorca. He talked Volkswagen's financial department into clearing the funds needed to buy the brand right after he returned to Germany, and the transaction was completed in 1998. With an engine and a name, Piech set the ball rolling. Italidesign's Giorgetto Giugiaro designed the EB118 concept in a matter of months and presented it to the public at the 1998 edition of the Paris Auto Show. It arrived as a front-engined coupe powered by the Austrian engineer's 18-cylinder engine. Several concepts followed: the EB218 shown at the 1999 Geneva Motor Show explored what a Bugatti sedan could look like, the EB18/3 Chiron introduced that same year moved the brand in a sportier direction, and the EB18/4 Veyron brought the idea of a modern-day hypercar much closer to production. It's this design study that received the green light for production.