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Since the growth performance of the domestic luxury market has become increasingly prominent, first-tier or second-tier luxury brands have achieved significant sales growth. Due to the outstanding performance of the Mercedes-Benz brand in the first half of the year, it surpassed the BMW and Audi brands, and there is a big gap between Mercedes-Benz and Audi. At this point, Audi plans to "raise" the plan to return to the top of luxury car sales.

A few days ago, German media reported that Audi will set up a second joint venture with its joint venture company FAW Group, which is scheduled to use the PPE platform to produce electric vehicles to speed up the layout of new cars in China. But in response to this, FAW-Volkswagen Audi and Audi China both said to the media that they would not comment.

It is worth noting that on the eve of the Beijing auto show, an Shihao, president of Audi China, revealed in an interview with the media that Audi plans to set up a new joint venture with FAW-Volkswagen and FAW-Volkswagen Audi in China to focus on the field of electric travel, but did not disclose much about the details of Audi.

Audi brand, as a joint venture high-end brand that takes the lead in entering the Chinese market, has been leading the domestic high-end car market with absolute advantage, and has contributed to the improvement of its global performance to a great extent. After all, China's premium car market is also the fastest growing and the largest in absolute terms in the world, and it is also the largest single market for Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz.

However, "the leading edge accumulated over the past 30 years has been continuously damaged in recent years," said one industry expert with regret. "the Audi're-joint venture 'incident four years ago directly led to great changes in China's high-end car market. Audi is also far ahead from the original, to be surpassed by BMW and Mercedes-Benz at the same time, and the gap between them has been further widened."

Even though FAW Audi announced that its cumulative sales from January to August this year exceeded 430000, up 2.8% from the same period last year, and its cumulative sales in China exceeded 6 million, it became the only luxury car brand in the Chinese market to break this figure.

But from a single brand point of view, the Audi brand has not won the title of annual sales champion since 2017. This is still the case this year, public data show that in the first half of this year, Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi sold 346100 vehicles, 329100 vehicles and 301800 vehicles respectively.

In the face of the current unfavorable situation, FAW-Volkswagen Audi is also making positive attempts to reverse this passive situation. Including the continuous launch of more product models, such as domestic special models. At the just-opened Beijing Auto Show, Audi brought Q5L derivative models and launched the Q5L Sportback model.

It is understood that the debut of the Q5L Sportback is the global debut of the Chinese market, and it is also a long wheelbase model tailor-made for Chinese users and exclusively for Chinese customers. The whole vehicle is based on the existing Audi Q5L and has not changed much in appearance.

According to Sun Huibin, executive deputy general manager of FAW-Volkswagen Audi sales Division, the new Audi Q5L Sportback is an innovative development and lengthening process of FAW-Volkswagen ahead of Audi Global, and for the first time to achieve a simultaneous global debut between China and Germany. "

In addition, plans to increase the Chinese market will also include improving the domestic electrification layout. An Shihao has revealed that the Chinese market, as a major market for Audi, will create another "golden decade" in the Chinese market from 2020.

It is understood that this "golden decade" is Audi's future electrification strategy in China. In its view, electrification and intelligence are important pillars of cars in the future, so it will expand investment and research and development of new products in the Chinese market, while developing more Audi brand models suitable for the needs of the Chinese market. And in the future, the products will be listed at the same time as the European market, so that Chinese consumers will feel it for the first time.

Nowadays, the Chinese market is the main strategic market for many multinational car companies, so it is inevitable for Audi to increase its investment in the region. Although Audi plans to re-establish a second joint venture with FAW and focuses on accelerating the layout of electrified models, it may not help Audi to improve its brand competitiveness. after all, the current Audi brand's strategic goals are similar to Mercedes-Benz and BMW, and it is still a great challenge to regain domestic luxury car sales.

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