2024 was a terrible year for Audi. Delivers fell by 11.8% to 1,671,218 cars, allowing Tesla to overtake the Four Rings for the first time ever. Domestic rivals BMW and Mercedes also finished way ahead in the luxury sales race. With that in mind, you’d think that the last thing Audi needs to do is increase prices and risk alienating even more customers. But sales figures aren’t everything—profit margins are key to a healthy balance sheet.
Audi intends to move upmarket and charge more money, even if that potentially means selling fewer cars. It will do so without stepping on Porsche’s toes, as it believes there is room to grow by distancing itself further from the core Volkswagen brand. In an interview with Auto Express, the automaker’s new boss in the UK, Jose Miguel Aparicio, revealed the bold plan:
“We are making a step upwards in terms of premiumness, increasing the prestige, desirability and perception of the brand, and more interested in the quality of business than the quantity.”
Get ready for a “significant increase in price” to reflect Audi’s new higher positioning in the already complicated VW Group hierarchy. The Ingolstadt-based marque knows it takes more than just increasing prices for people to perceive Audi as a higher-end car manufacturer: “We really need to create this brand attraction and desire.”
Audi has already announced plans to discontinue its cheapest car and SUV. Neither the A1 Sportback nor the Q2 will survive the next generation, effectively making the A3 the company’s entry-level model. At the other end of the lineup, the push upmarket could start with a fancier successor to the A8, as the Grandsphere concept pictured here suggests. Additionally, the Urbansphere concept hinted at a high-end SUV positioned above the Q7 and Q8.
However, the already aging A8 will reportedly stick around longer than initially planned. Auto Motor and Sport reported last year that Audi could give the current generation of its fullsize sedan another facelift. If planned, the BMW 7 Series rival would be offered for at least a couple of years, so the Grandsphere might not hit the market until later this decade. The absence of spy shots indicates the swanky EV is not coming anytime soon.
Audi competitor Jaguar is also moving deeper into luxury territory, but it’s taking a radical approach by morphing into an electric-only brand, to the dismay of traditionalists. Audi had intended to go purely EV by 2033, but it has had a change of heart and now wants to stay “flexible.”
Even Stellantis-owned DS Automobiles has Bentley in its crosshairs, so you could argue that all bets are off in the luxury segment.
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