Audi has always been one of the main icons of German engineering, but the company has recently been plagued by failures in terms of electric vehicles, it is lagging behind competitors and to speed up the entry of new products to the market, it is forced to ask the price of Chinese platforms. Insiders call SAIC and its subsidiary IM Motors one of the priority candidates with whom Audi is currently negotiating.
This week, several reputable business media, citing insiders, reported that Audi was in talks with Chinese companies to buy a platform for its electric vehicles, and today Reuters even named the main candidate — IM Motors, controlled by the state concern SAIC.
The Chinese platform was needed by Audi due to the fact that its own “green” novelties, including the sensational Artemis project, stalled due to a systemic crisis in the VW concern, more precisely in its digital division Cariad, which is developing a new generation integrated operating system for all brands. Volkswagen group. This division failed the schedule, and the management did not sound the alarm in time, in connection with which Herbert Diess, chairman of the board of the Volkswagen Group, was urgently dismissed last summer. The crisis in Cariad has delayed the development of new electric mobility platforms and the need to extend the life cycle of the MEB platform.
Meanwhile, Chinese companies today, on the contrary, are mastering electric vehicles at increased speeds and flooding both domestic and export markets with them. Audi has a fairly strong position in China: in January-May this year, the German brand, according to CAAM (China Association of Automobile Manufacturers), sold 229,493 cars here, which is 13.1% more than in the same period last year, but this mostly «hydrocarbon» models, and the share of «trains» accounts for only about 5% of sales, and this is a serious concern for the management of Audi.
The leaders of the EV segment of the Chinese market are entirely local brands and the lone Tesla, for some reason the Chinese are almost not interested in battery-powered Audis in their current form. It's gotten to the point where Audi dealerships in China started showing signs saying «We have electric cars too!» last year, but that's obviously a makeshift measure.
The IM Motors platform has many famous components, and British Williams Advanced Engineering tuned the handling. Front suspension — double wishbones, rear — multi-link.
In order not to be too far behind the Chinese companies due to the forced delay in their own development, Audi management decided to take extreme measures, namely the purchase of a suitable platform in China. Negotiations with IM Motors, according to insiders, are at an advanced stage, that is, they may soon be officially announced. .jpg» />IM L7 in Snake Performance
The electric car company IM Motors was founded in 2020 as a joint venture between SAIC, the IT giant Alibaba and the development company Zhangjiang Hi-Tech, while SAIC owns 54% of the shares, that is, IM Motor, in fact, is its subsidiary. The letters IM in the name of the company stands for Intelligence in Motion, which can be translated into Russian as «intelligence in motion.» » />IM LS7
IM Motors has only two models so far — the IM L7 business sedan and the IM LS7 crossover, in January-May of this year, IM Motors sold 6545 cars in China, which is not bad considering rather high prices. Both models are positioned in the premium segment, the platform for them was developed jointly with the British engineering firm Williams Advanced Engineering (WAE) — this fact is probably very popular with the negotiators from Audi. What models Audi can release on the IM Motors platform is anyone's guess.
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