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Audi's Project Artemis woes could delay range of VW Group EVs

Two years ago, Audi's then new CEO Markus Duesmann announced his first big initiative called Project Artemis. The plan's marquee component is "to implement a new lighthouse project for Audi in record time," being "a highly efficient electric car scheduled to be on the road as early as 2024" on a brand new platform that would be shared with Porsche and Bentley. An ex-VW and -Porsche man named Alex Hitzinger, who'd also spent time at Apple working on the tech company's electric car, was brought on board to lead Project Artemis and come up with new ideas. Parent Volkswagen Group said it wanted to become "as agile as in a racing team," removing the bureaucratic molasses and bottlenecks interfering with getting the best product on the road in the best time. However, in any grand venture, failure comes before success. Automobilwoche reports that Artemis is struggling through issues large enough to push the product plans back by years. The issue, as it was with the ID.3 lineup on the eve of that car's launch, is software. Well, that's the latest, largest problem; Artemis has already been through copious struggles before getting to the software bit. Two months after Hitzinger came on, in December 2020, VW raised its EV volume target from 50% to 70% by 2030. That necessitated a rethink of the VW Group's entire platform strategy considering the far greater production scale. Hitzinger only lasted six months in the job, ousted in May 2021, supposedly because Audi believed his ideas were "not suitable for profitable series production" among other reasons. By that time, the pace of software development was already said to be six months behind schedule, with the Car.Software division working on VW.OS 2.0 "not yet running at the speed hoped for." Internal frictions were noteworthy and costly as well. VW's commercial division plant in Hanover was meant to build Artemis vehicles for Audi, Porsche and Bentley, but Automobilwoche reported in January of this year that Porsche paid a ""small three-digit million amount" — like $100 million or so — to get out of the deal mandating its vehicles come from the Hanover facility.    So Audi effectively brought Artemis in-house to lead vehicle development, and Car.Software turned into Cariad to get VW.OS and VW.AC, which stands for Automotive Cloud, to market.  The first Audi vehicle under Project Artemis was planned to arrive by the end of 2024, a production version of the Grandsphere concept.

Porsche Australia racing chief dies in crash

The motor racing community in Australia was saddened today to learn of the passing of Jamey Blaikie, a longtime racing administrator and former motorsport director for Porsche in Australia. A former racing driver in his own right, Blaikie was better known for his instrumental role in starting the Porsche Carrera Cup in Australia back in 2003. He left Porsche Cars Australia just last year to pursue other interests, including running an Aston Martin entry in the GT Asia series. Blaikie was in Fiji reportedly undertaking charity work there when his rental car collided with a truck, prematurely ending his life at just 52 years old. Our condolences go out to his family, friends and the motorsport community Down Under, where he'll surely be missed.

Porsche bringing electric Pajun concept to Frankfurt?

France's L'Automobile magazine reports that a precursor to the long-rumored and much-discussed Porsche Pajun will come to the Frankfurt Motor Show. The reveal is being characterized as a "'connected' study that could well turn into a series model." Just seeing something at all, however, would be a major step. Pajun palaver has been splattered all over the Internet for more than three years, since back when it was going to come with a V6 to be an ICE challenger to the Audi A6, BMW 5 Series, and Mercedes E-Class. The intervening years have turned the rumormill up to Level: Sasquatch, and still we had no idea when we'd ever see a car that, at one time, was headed for showrooms next year. Then we got a bunch of reports at the end of last year about a swoopy electric sedan, accompanied by patent filings for novel electric and hydrogen fuel cell powerplants. This year, Porsche has been making noise in the US and Europe about EV and connected-car initiatives, and reports blossomed with giggly details concerning the Pajun, like a 300-mile range, potentially 600 horsepower, two electric motors, four-wheel steering, and a topological battery layout with "108 separate battery pouches." A more recent report posits a Tesla Model S-fighting 420 horsepower and a 265-mile range. So we hope L'Automobile is correct, because we can't wait to see the proper, sheetmetal inspiration for whatever the Pajun will be. Related Video: