Audi today announced the launch of a new team group called “Artemis,” and they plan to develop an “efficient electric car” to come to market by 2024.
The Artemis initiative was started by Audi’s new CEO Markus Duesmann with the goal to “develop a pioneering model for Audi quickly and unbureaucratically.”
At Audi, like at many other established automakers, it takes an extraordinary amount of time to get a new model to production, and you have to jump through many bureaucratic hoops to make it happen.
It was fine when it was business as usual in the industry, but now in the midst of the electric revolution, Audi is having to compete with Tesla and other companies operating more with a startup or tech company mentality of rapid innovation.
Audi is recognizing that and implementing a solution.
Duesmann commented on the announcement:
The Volkswagen Group’s brands stand for excellent technologies — and have potential for much more. With 75 planned electric models by 2029, the current electric initiative at the Volkswagen Group naturally ties up all our capacities. The obvious question was how we could implement additional high-tech benchmarks without jeopardizing the manageability of existing projects, and at the same time utilize new opportunities in the markets.
The new CEO said that the Artemis team will be “given a large degree of freedom” and it will work globally, but will be based in their high-tech hub of the INCampus in Ingolstadt, Germany.
The “focus” will be on “new technologies for electric, highly automated driving with a specific model reference.”
Artemis’ first task will be to develop “a highly efficient electric car that is scheduled to be on the road as early as 2024.”
Alex Hitzinger, a successful motorsport chief engineer and currently in charge of autonomous driving in the Group, has been made head of the Artemis team, and he will report directly to the new CEO.
Electrek’s Take
Kudos to Audi. They recognized that there’s a problem with the way that they bring new vehicle programs to production, and they are trying an aggressive approach to try to fix it.
With a focus on electric vehicles, it should result in more EVs on the road quicker.
I also like the mention of a focus on “a highly efficient electric car.”
I reviewed the Audi e-tron, the automaker’s first all-electric car built to be electric from the ground up, and I was fairly impressed by most aspects of the vehicle, except for its efficiency.
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