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Audi: 20-25% of our cars will have a plug by 2025

If you like the promise of Audi's E-Tron Quattro concept, you're going to love this post. Speaking at an intimate dinner in Los Angeles the night before the start of the Los Angeles Auto Show, Audi of America president Scott Keogh had nothing but positive things to say about his brand's future plug-in vehicles, including the production version of the E-Tron Quattro. The most interesting was that he said he expects a full 20 to 25 percent of Audi's sales to be electrified by around 2025, and there was lots of detail to back up his vision. "This is the reality as we see it." - Scott Keogh Keogh wasn't making specific predictions, but it's been a long while since we've heard such a high-level Audi executive act like such a troubadour for the electric vehicle future. As long-time readers will remember, we used to hear things like this from Nissan's Carlos Ghosn, but public predictions have taken a bit of a back seat recently. It's promising to hear reasonable optimism again. "When you look at what needs to happen and you look at what we see happening in the marketplace, we're probably looking at a world where 25 percent of Audi's sales, over the next ten years, just to throw out a rough point in the future, are either going to be full electric or have some plug," Keogh said. "This is the reality as we see it." The reason Keogh is so positive is because Audi thinks the E-Tron Quattro concept is going to birth one heck of an EV. Whatever it's called when it arrives – it's unlikely to be the Q6, as some rumors have it. Internally, Audi is calling it the C-BEV, since it is a C-segment Battery Electric Vehicle – the concept previews a luxury all-electric vehicle with a range of over 300 miles. No one is talking about the price yet, but Audi of America's director of product management, Filip Brabec, did say that the sweet spot for the pricing is in the range of how mainstream luxury vehicles are priced today. "If you can put a car in the market that's priced right ... people are going to want to buy it," Keogh said. Read into all of that what you will. It's not just the price that's going to be right. Keogh said that the key point is changing hearts and minds to want electric vehicles. That means tripling down on public infrastructure (see more below) and making sure the car itself is amazing. "Everyone knows, in the history of the world, launch a defining, game-changing product, in whatever category it bloody is, and - boom - the world changes," Keogh said.

Audi commits two R18 E-Tron Quattros to final Sebring race for LMP1 cars

We were baffled a few weeks back when the American Le Mans Series and Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series announced new classes that will make up their combined racing program in 2014. Gone from the list is the Le Mans Prototype class, otherwise known as LMP1. The LMP1 class has long been the top dog of endurance racing, both in Europe and the US, so we couldn't figure out why this newly minted racing series was jettisoning it like yesterday's donuts.
It appears as if Audi is confused by the move as well. The German brand has announced it will participate in this year's ALMS opening round, the famed 12 Hours of Sebring, as it does every year, and bringing two Audi R18 E-Tron Quattro hybrid race cars with which to compete. Unlike every other year, Audi is treating this year's race as its potential swan song in this famous Florida race.
There's a good reason that Audi is so fond of the 12 Hours of Sebring, as it debuted the gas-powered R8R there in 1999 that kicked off its participation in the upper echelon of endurance racing. The R8R preceded the R8, which debuted at Sebring in 2000 and won that race, starting an amazing career for that car that included five more wins at Sebring. The R8 was followed by the R10, then the R15 and R18, and finally we wind up at today's R18 E-Tron Quattro - all winners, all dominant, all exciting to watch.

Audi tops BMW and Mercedes in luxury sales

April was a good month for Audi, as the four-ring automaker beat out both Mercedes-Benz and BMW in sales. Bloomberg reports that it was America's appetite for CUVs like the Q5 and ancient Q7 that helped Audi move nearly 153,000 units around the globe. It's not all good news, though. Audi's worldwide sales only jumped by 2.5 percent, compared to BMW and Mercedes, whose sales increased 5.6 and 11 percent, respectively. On top of that, BMW is still the best-selling brand (of the three, anyway) so far in 2015, outselling Audi by roughly 9,000 units and Mercedes by about 23,000 vehicles. Considering the faster growth of its rivals, it's unclear if Audi will be able to hang onto the monthly sales crown beyond April, or if BMW will continue its reign as the world's biggest luxury automaker.