► Audi plans to cut 7500 jobs
► Brussels plant confirmed to close
► Sales fell, but Audi F1 is still on
Just a day after it announced that it would cut 7500 jobs in Germany, Audi has revealed why it needs to: a set of disappointing sales, revenue and profit figures for 2024 which are unlikely to improve much in 2025.
The job losses have been agreed by the works council and will save the brand €1bn every year. Audi had previously confirmed that it would close its Brussels plant. To win the unions’ approval for the cuts it has also announced that it will invest €8bn in its German sites over the next four years. It will also build the new entry-level EV, codenamed E3, which will replace the A1 and Q2 in Ingolstadt, reassuring those who worried that cost pressures would cause more affordable future Audis to be built at its overseas plants.
Audi delivered 1.67m cars in 2024, down 12 per cent on the previous year. Of the other brands Audi controls, Bentley deliveries fell 22 per cent to 10,643, and Lamborghini’s rose 6 per cent to a new record of 10,687. Group revenue fell 8 per cent to €64.5bn, and profit dropped 38 per cent to €3.9bn.
Audi CEO Gernot Dollner blamed a combination of geopolitical changes, a tough economic climate, inconsistent subsidies for EVs, supply bottlenecks and an unprecedented change in Audi’s model line-up, which will leave it with the newer range than all its rivals by the end of this year but will cost it sales as old models are faded out and new ones ramp up.
CFO Jurgen Rittersberger said that the financial underperformance will not affect the brand’s plans to enter Formula 1 from the 2026 season. ‘The reach and popularity of F1 are increasingly considerably,’ he said. ‘Our motivations haven’t changed.’
Dollner said Audi will continue to produce ICE, hybrid and fully electric vehicles indefinitely, and until ‘market conditions’ allowed combustion engines to be phased out. He refused to put a date on that, or to be drawn on whether Scout, VW’s new US-focussed SUV brand. would spawn an Audi version.
The production version of the first car from Audi’s China-only sub-brand produced in conjunction with SAIC will be shown at the Shanghai motor show in April, he said, and two more models will follow, all featuring self-driving software from Huawei. Dollner also said that Audi was learning how to design and engineer new models faster from its Chinese partners, with a forthcoming model currently under development in Ingolstadt set to be completed in around two years, instead of the five more common at an established carmaker.
Rittersberger said that Audi’s revenues should improve by at least €3bn this year to €67.5bn, but Dollner warned that despite the changes 2025 ‘will not be any easier: quite the contrary’.