Audi Hints at a Gloomy 2025
Audi reveals 2024 production and financial figures, painting a picture of a notable decline compared to the prior year.
The automaker's closure of a Brussels, Belgium, plant early in 2025 came after a historic realignment by the VW Group and its labor unions in late 2024.
Audi expects 2025 to be a "difficult financial year," citing a challenging and uncertain business environment.
Audi endured a challenging 2024, which saw something rare for the marque and for Europe's auto industry as a whole: plans for the closure of a factory. The Brussels, Belgium, plant that built the Q8 e-tron and its Sportback twin was shuttered at the end of February, with Audi having been unable to find a buyer for the complicated site.
The automaker had blamed a global decline in orders for the large electric model throughout 2024, but the location of the plant near the city center had also played a role, making retooling for a different model prohibitively expensive.
After considering all the options, Audi made the decision to close the plant last December, just as the VW Group wrapped up a historic round of reorganization on a scale not seen for the Group in decades.
"Global economic changes and intensified international competition are posing major challenges to Audi and the industry as a whole," said Audi CEO Gernot Döllner. "We are facing this reality with the courage to break new ground and with confidence in our traditional strengths."
Audi now says that 2025 might be equally tough, with the automaker forecasting weaker overall growth than in the previous 12 months.
"Audi expects 2025 to be another difficult financial year in what will continue to be a volatile and challenging environment," the automaker said in recapping its 2024 results.
Vehicle deliveries fell from 1,895,240 in 2023, to 1,671,218 in 2024 for the Audi brand.
Operating profit dropped from €6.2 billion to €3.9 billion ($6.7 billion to $4.2 billion) over the same time period for the Audi Group, which also includes Bentley, Lamborghini, and Ducati, seeing one of the sharpest drops in recent memory.
'Amid a difficult environment with intensified competition and a sluggish economy, we kept Audi on track in 2024 and closed out the year on financially sound footing,' said CFO Jürgen Rittersberger. 'However, we still have a tough road ahead of us."
But Audi has new models on the way, with the automaker sketching out the outlines of the next two years when it comes to its global plans.
The A6 e-tron is on the way stateside later this year, as part of a larger product offensive.
In all, the automaker is on track to launch 20 new models over the course of 2024 and 2025, with half of them being battery-electric models. The US market in particular will see 10 new models between the start of the year and through the end of 2026, including a new A6, as well as new A5 and Q5 models.
When it comes to its offerings in China—the single largest EV market by a comfortable margin—Audi recently kicked off production of the Audi Q6L e-tron along with longtime partner FAW, with more models on the way.
"We are also placing special emphasis on our positioning in the core markets of China and North America," Döllner added. "At the same time, we are working intently on creating more efficient structures throughout the entire company, with a view to getting innovations onto the road faster."
Audi is also one of the automakers expected to be affected the most by the new tariffs aimed at imported vehicles in the US, as Audi almost no North American manufacturing presence. The only exception is the Q5, which is built in Mexico. A handful of others are built outside Germany, including the Q7 and Q8 that are produced in Slovakia.
The new tariffs, if they enter into force and remain so for the rest of the year, will certainly affect Audi and its corporate parent's 2025 financial results in the US, though the effect on consumers and sales volumes has yet to be fully gauged.
Will tariffs on imported models produced by German automakers make a severe dent in the companies' US sales, or will the buyers of those models not be dissuaded much as they were pricey to begin with? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
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