Audi and SAIC’s first EV is due in 2025

Audi has partnered with SAIC, China’s biggest automaker, to make an EV car platform.

The EV platform will be called the Advanced Digitized Platform, designed for subcompact and compact cars.

The partnership will accelerate the development of electric vehicles in the Chinese market.

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Audi has appointed Fermín Soneira Santos, who was previously responsible for the automaker’s compact EV range, to oversee the partnership.

The automaker will launch at least three vehicles based on the EV platform.

The first of these vehicles is due in 2025.

According to the automaker, the partnership will help shorten the development time by 30%.

The German automaker has recently revealed its first next-gen EV, the new all-electric Q6 e-tron SUV.

For now, the automaker only sells the Q4 E-Tron and Q5 E-Tron in China.

Both of these EVs are based on the Volkswagen Group’s MEB platform.

However, only 6,420 units were sold in the first four months of 2024, which is less than half a percent of China’s EV market.

Whereas BYD, China’s top EV maker has sold almost 100,000 EVs in the country in the first four months of 2024.

Although Audi and Volkswagen dominate the gas-powered car market, they have faced a few challenges in the electric era.

To face this issue, even Volkswagen has entered a partnership with Chinese EV startup Xpeng, known for its flying cars.

The two companies will jointly develop Volkswagen electric cars to sell in China, based on Xpeng’s EV platform.

These cars are planned for launch in early 2026 with two midsize segment models.

So it will be a while before we see the result of this partnership.

Audi and SAIC, on the other hand, joined hands specifically due to the accelerated development.

Due to that, we will get to see some subcompact and compact EV cars from the German automaker quite soon.