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Audi spending an additional $2.5 billion on expansion through 2019

Every year, it seems the Volkswagen Group announces a new and larger spend to push growth and profit, with Audi a regular recipient of the moolah. That's reasonable, seeing as hauls in 40 percent of Group operating profits. In December last year Audi said it would spend an additional 100 million euros ($122M US) per year through 2018 to develop new models and expand production, targeting 60 models by 2020 and luxury sales leadership. This month Audi said it will boost that by another two billion euros ($2.5B US) over the next five years, for a total outlay of 24 billion euros from 2014 to 2019. Something like 70 percent of those billions will be spent on new models, technology like "connectivity and lightweight construction," and factory expansion at its plants in Ingolstadt and Neckarsulm. Most of the ten models that will plump the lineup to 60 cars will mainly be aimed at the C and D segments, as well as crossovers, the brand's burgeoning portfolio of PHEV models, and all-electric cars that will begin staking ground in the segment. The big spend comes at the same time as Audi is working hard to reduce costs by $2.5 billion to maintain profitability, part of a larger push by VW to cut costs by $6.1 billion by 2017. More than a billion euros will go to new factories in Mexico and Brazil. Work begins on the Mexico plant next year, and when it comes on-line in 2016, Audi's Q5 successor will roll out of its warehouse doors; Audi has already announced it will hire 850 more workers next year in Mexico. When that's done, Mexico's production of German luxury cars will only trail that of Germany, China and the US. The company's Brazil plant will produce the A3 and S3 starting next year, and the brand figures luxury car buying there will triple by 2017. News Source: Reuters Earnings/Financials Plants/Manufacturing Audi Volkswagen Luxury Mexico Brazil ulrich hackenberg

VW, Fiat, Mercedes could be CNG winners in Europe

Fiat ads in the US try to play up the exotic, sexy side of Italian culture. On the home front in Italy, however, passenger-vehicle sales are marked by something less edgy and quite a bit more practical: the growth of compressed-natural-gas (CNG) powered car sales. In fact, Italy is leading a group of European countries where CNG sales are on the upswing and may be benefiting automakers like VW, Fiat and Mercedes-Benz, according to Automotive News. VW started sales of its Golf TGI natural-gas vehicle this year – the company's fourth in Europe – while Mercedes-Benz added a natural-gas B-class model. Fiat accounts for about 50 percent of CNG vehicles sold on the continent. In all, Europe's CNG sales through September totaled about 67,000, up seven percent from a year earlier, Automotive News Europe says, citing research firm JATO Dynamics. And the number of CNG vehicles on Europe's roads could jump tenfold within the next decade. The draw is a combination of lower refueling prices and a CNG drivetrain that typically emits less CO2 than diesel vehicles. As for Italy, about five percent of new-vehicle sales are CNG. To put that into perspective, hybrids, battery-electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids and diesels combined to account for about 4.2 percent of US vehicle sales last year. News Source: Automotive News - sub. req.Image Credit: Volkswagen Green Fiat Mercedes-Benz Volkswagen Natural Gas Vehicles CNG

How the VW diesels perform in cheat mode

Are you tired of the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal? Yeah? We are, too. But here's a story that, at the very least, gives us something resembling answers about one of the most important questions surrounding the firestorm – how will the affected cars perform when they're in their emissions-cheating test mode? Consumer Reports was able to find out, tapping into what it believes is the cheat mode. By turning the car to accessory mode, flipping on the hazards, and tapping the gas pedal five times, CR was able to defeat the auto-engaged traction and stability controls, which it believes activates cheat mode. The safeties will reengage if it detects the rear wheels spinning, so the next step was what CR called "a hack." The team unplugged the rear wheel sensors, so the car's computers couldn't tell whether the wheels were spinning. By the way, don't try this at home. With that done, CR hit the road, testing both a 2011 Jetta Sportwagen TDI and a 2015 Jetta TDI sedan in their normal and cheat modes. Why both cars? Well, the 2011 uses the EA188 diesel, which represents the bulk of the affected cars, while the newer Jetta uses the latest EA288, which just arrived for model year 2015. The results are, in a word, interesting. The EA188 engine lost 0.6 seconds on the way to 60 miles per hour while in emissions-compliant cheat mode, and fuel economy fell from 50 miles per gallon to 46. For the newer EA288, the 0-60 difference was negligible – just a tenth of a second – while the fuel economy dipped from 53 to 50 mpg. There are a few takeaways here. First of all, and as suspected, running in cheat mode did hurt both performance and fuel economy. But perhaps more importantly, even in emissions-compliant mode, both vehicles easily beat their EPA fuel economy estimates. According to FuelEconomy.gov, the highest rated 2011 TDI Sportwagen, the manual-trans model, was rated at 30 mpg city and 42 mpg highway, with a combined rating of 34 (the auto drops the city and combined ratings by one mpg, while the highway falls by three). The best a 2015 Jetta TDI sedan can do according to Uncle Sam, meanwhile, is 31 city, 46 highway, and 36 combined with the manual (again, the auto is worse, but only by a single highway mpg). Related Video: