- Audi is struggling with declining sales and profits, impacting its overall market performance.
- While it blames a challenging market and competitive conditions, deeper issues stem from an aging lineup.
- An assortment of new models are on the horizon, although the problems won’t be fixed overnight.
Audi is at a crossroads as sales are down and EVs are struggling. If that wasn’t bad enough, they’ve been saddled with an aging and somewhat uninspired lineup. That’s a perfect storm of bad news and customers have turned their backs on the brand.
Through the first nine months of the year, dealers were only able to move 139,665 vehicles in the United States, which was 16.8% less than a year ago. Chinese sales were down 8.5%, while European sales fell 9.8%.
More: Audi Wants To Cut Workforce By 15%, Report Warns Thousands Of Jobs At Risk
Revenues and profits have also dropped. In the third quarter alone, their operating profit plummeted 91% to €106 ($114) million due, in part, to restructuring efforts at their Brussels plant. That facility builds the Q8 e-tron family, which Audi wanted to axe due to declining sales.
While we’ve reported extensively on these problems, how would you turn things around? The answer seems pretty obvious as Audi focused too much on new EVs and not enough on mainstream products.
This means bread and butter models got old and outdated. The Q7 is the perfect example of this as the crossover is nearly a decade old and two facelifts can’t hide that fact. Unsurprisingly, the Lexus TX is now eating the Q7’s lunch and even a stop sale order, which meant Lexus sold zero TXs for the entire month of September, hasn’t halted the domination.
Speaking of old and over the hill, the A8 looks like a dinosaur compared to newer rivals from BMW and Mercedes. This helps to explain why the company has only sold 1,232 units through September, which is nearly as many S-Classes as Mercedes sold in the third quarter alone.
Of course, things are starting to get better as Audi recently introduced the redesigned A5 and Q5 along with their S performance siblings. This is on top of the new A6 and Q6 e-trons. They’ll be joined by a new A7 early next year, while redesigned versions of the Q3 and Q7 are also in the works.
So, what’s the solution here? It’s clear Audi needs more than just a handful of shiny new models—it needs a strategy to reignite its identity and reclaim its edge. The brand has to stop playing catch-up and start leading again. But what do you think? How would you save Audi? Let us know in the comments below.
