Audi on Tuesday confirmed plans for two new electric SUVs. The vehicles will be built at Audi’s main plant in Ingolstadt, Germany from 2021.
Audi made the confirmation during a meeting with employee representatives to discuss job security through 2025. Crucially, it helps to alleviate fears employees may have had about job cuts in an age of ongoing digitalization and electrification.
“We have long been fighting for a job guarantee up until the end of 2025,” Peter Mosch, who represents Audi’s employees, said in a statement. “That is why specifically the decision on the two new all-electric SUVs is another milestone on our road to a secure future.”
Audi’s first volume electric car, the e-tron SUV, bows in 2018, and shortly after its arrival will be a more coupe-like version dubbed the e-tron Sportback. Both of these will be built at a plant in Brussels, Belgium.
But Audi is planning many more electric cars in order to reach a 2025 goal of having one out of every four sales being a zero-emission model. The automaker will introduce a third electric car, likely a city car, by 2020.
Audi didn’t provide any further details on the two SUVs due in 2021. It’s likely they will be smaller than the mid-size e-tron and e-tron Sportback in order to provide Audi with alternatives for the upcoming Mercedes-Benz EQC and Tesla Model Y small SUVs. One will likely be a conventionally shaped SUV and the other a more coupe-like Sportback.
Audi is also working on an electric car for its Audi Sport brand. The performance division’s boss, Stephan Winkelmann, in September said an Audi Sport electric car would hit the market in 2020 or 2021.
