The carmaker wants to significantly increase its share of electric cars by the end of the year.
(Photo: dpa)
Dusseldorf The Ingolstadt carmaker Audi wants to stay out of the price war in the industry. No price reductions are currently planned, said CFO Jürgen Rittersberger on Friday when presenting the business figures for the first quarter. “We are pursuing a sustainable pricing strategy, we owe that to our customers.” A price war also has a massive impact on residual values. “We will not participate in the price competition.”
The electric car manufacturer Tesla had recently repeatedly reduced the prices for its vehicles and was able to sell more cars than Audi in the first quarter. In recent years, the prices for new and used cars have only known the way up because fewer vehicles were produced due to the shortage of semiconductors. On Thursday, BMW had predicted that vehicle prices would normalize: Better availability of vehicles can be expected with better chip supply, which could lead to more competition.
Audi suffers from valuation effects
Audi’s sales rose by 18.2 percent to 16.9 billion euros in the first quarter. The operating result shrank by almost half to 1.8 billion euros after 3.5 billion a year ago. Chief Financial Officer Rittersberger said that valuation effects from raw material hedging transactions in particular played a role, which would have pushed the result down by 400 million euros. The results of the parent company Volkswagen had developed similarly.
In terms of returns, Audi lagged behind its direct competition in the first quarter at 10.8 percent. BMW came to 12.1 percent, Mercedes to over 14 percent.
Audi intends to significantly increase its share of electric cars by the end of the year. Rittersberger said he expects a double-digit share of total sales. Currently, 8.2 percent of Audi vehicles only have an electric motor. The company had announced that it would launch the last new combustion engine model in 2026. For the end of the current year, the Ingolstadt-based company has announced the start of a model offensive in which they want to put more than ten new all-electric vehicles on sale within two years.
Audi has software problems
Due to massive problems in software development, Audi had to postpone numerous model launches. For example, the electric SUV Q6 e-tron will be launched two years late. The lack of electric models is causing problems for Audi, especially in China, the largest electric car market in the world. In the first quarter, the VW subsidiary was only able to sell 3,416 electric cars there.
The market share is 0.4 percent. Mercedes did even worse with 3395. The Chinese leader among German car manufacturers is BMW with 20,502 electric cars sold.
Audi boss Markus Duesmann (front left): The Volkswagen subsidiary has to catch up, especially in China.
(Photo: imago images/Belga)
Even including all drive technologies, Audi is losing market share in China. Compared to the same quarter of the previous year, total sales fell by 15.6 percent to 136,416 units. Things went better in other important car sales markets. In Europe, Audi sold 18 percent more in the first quarter, and sales in the USA even rose by 48.6 percent.
The company is sticking to its forecast for the year as a whole and anticipates deliveries of 1.8 to 1.9 billion euros and sales of 69 to 72 billion euros. The return on sales should be between nine and eleven percent.
With material from Reuters
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