Audi will build its planned electric vehicles at its factories around the world, including Mexico and Hungary.
The company plans to build its first electric model, the e-tron SUV in a plant in Brussels and has since been pressured by labor unions to allocate EV production runs to its Germany-based factories, Reuters reports.
“In future, electric cars will roll off the line in all of our plants,” Rupert Stadler Audi’s chief executive said at a gathering of 7,000 workers at Audi’s base in Ingolstadt.
Aside from Ingolstadt and Neckarsulm in Germany, Audi has factories in Belgium, Mexico and Hungary, and also makes use of the facilities owned by parent VW and Skoda to produce cars overseas. The company is planning to build more than 20 electrified models by 2025, half of which will be all-electric according to Peter Mertens, Audi’s development chief.
Labor boss Peter Mosch called Audi’s top management executives to speed up the assigning process of the EV production runs to Germany as they fear they could lose out in the race for zero-emissions orders and projects.
Combined with the fallout of Group VW’s diesel scandal and a costly business transformation, the workers need to know Audi’s plans as soon as possible. “We need clarity,” said Mosch, a member of both Audi’s and the VW group’s supervisory boards.
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