The Audi boss once again shows his hypocrisy: he only sees the truth when it suits him

The boss of Audi shows his hypocrisy again, he sees the truth only when it suits him

Electric cars are dragging Audi down, but the brand’s bosses would never admit it. I think that is out of order now, just as it is out of order to criticize speeding on the highway. People like Markus Duesmann will say what is best for them at the time.

Audi’s press release about the brand’s sales last year is pretty bad. From time to time, the text celebrates electromobility and shows the fact that the car manufacturer has achieved a growth of 44% compared to the previous period. Without a larger context, it makes you want to congratulate, but once you put all the numbers into reality, the smile on your lips easily turns into a smile. Especially since Audi keeps repeating that it no longer wants to sell any more cars in a few years.

In addition, Audi sold 1,614,231 cars last year. That’s down 3.9% from 2021, and for the pre-coronavirus period we’re talking about a drop of tens of percent – at that time the automaker was selling more than 2 million vehicles per year. The most characteristic market therefore remains China, a very risky market, where the 642,548 vehicles sold represent a drop of 8.4% compared to the previous year. Where is the good news?

Ah, electric cars, except for the 1.6 million cars, only 118,196 were electric. We have a share of 7.3% of the total sales here, which, considering the high costs, usually means nothing more than a reduction in the plan. But the world is not governed by today’s economic reality, and that is why Hildegard Wortmann comments on the results, saying that “the large numbers associated with electric vehicles assure us that this is on the right track”. Yes, this is the same woman who said last year that the auto industry was at 50% risk of bankruptcy due to the switch to electric cars.

But after his speech, he probably headed to the carpet where Markus Duesmann, the boss of the entire car company, told him how to behave in front of the press. He revealed this personally in an interview with the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, where he did not forget to praise the synthetic fuel that the new head of the VW group is campaigning for. However, he also said that Audi will continue to go down the all-electric route.

“Agility” of Mr. Duesmann was confirmed by his other views. The Audi boss made it clear last year that he had no problem with Germany’s speed limit, but after being heavily criticized by the company’s customers, he has suddenly emerged as a champion of freedom, which he sees as – you guessed it – unlimited speed on the Autobahns. . “Everyone knows that Germany is a free country. The absence of speed limits is a sign of this freedom,” he says today. But even that may end if the oil runs out, as a last resort.

So Duesmann has shown that he has made policy like few others and that he says what we want to hear. And that these are often contradictory statements? Don’t worry, he says one, he says another, everyone gets their own account. In the end, the most important thing is practicality, where freedom of movement is restricted by electric vehicles like few other things. After all, the Audi Q4 e-tron can only go 160 km/h at most, which doesn’t quite match the Autobahn’s definition of free dynamics. As well as a theoretical range of 519 km per charge.

It is time for people like Duesmann to come out of their slumber and stop turning a blind eye to the truth. However, this has only happened with the proposed Euro 7 standard. Indeed, like almost everyone in the industry, the Audi boss says that politicians have not given manufacturers enough time to make fundamental changes. And that if they don’t do that, they will start laying off workers. Politicians can hear. Everyone now knows that this is the mad race of flat plate electromobility will lead. But Duesmann will probably only tell us when the time is right.

Source: Suddeutsche Zeitung via Focus

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