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Manufacturing of the present Audi A8 is because of end by the tip of 2026, and it’s not clear what is going to succeed it, if something.
Below the unique plan the A8 was due to get replaced by a pair of automobiles in 2027: a SUV nicknamed Landjet and a sedan dubbed Landyacht. Each had been to be based mostly on the sports activities variant of the Volkswagen Group’s new electric-only Scaleable Techniques Platform (SSP).
Engineering work on SSP Sport was being led by Porsche, which was planning to make use of the platform as the idea of a brand new three-row electrical SUV codenamed ‘K1’.
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With EV gross sales development not assembly expectations, particularly on the high of the market, Porsche cancelled K1 in late September, and can as an alternative develop a unique three-row SUV with petrol and plug-in hybrid drivetrains. Consequently, the SSP Sport structure received’t be manufacturing prepared till a while within the 2030s.
With out SSP Sport accessible, Audi has some powerful selections concerning the subsequent A8. It might be based mostly on the Platform Premium Combustion (PPC), which underpins the newest petrol and plug-in hybrid A6, or it might use a lengthened model of Platform Premium Electrical (PPE) that serves as the idea of the Audi A6 E-tron and Q6 E-tron, in addition to the Porsche Macan EV and the upcoming Cayenne EV.
The obvious resolution, facelifting and updating the present A8, has already been dominated out. An Audi spokesperson advised Automotive Information, a refreshed fourth-generation A8 is “not an choice” because of the price of assembly the newest rules.
After strain from worker representatives, Audi is anticipated to resolve on a path for the brand new A8 by the tip of the yr. Regardless of the Audi board decides, the automotive that replaces the fourth-generation A8 will take a time to develop, leaving a niche on the high of the Audi’s sedan vary for a couple of years, a minimum of.
Native gross sales of the fourth-generation A8 ended earlier this yr when Audi Australia withdrew the S8 from our market.
Within the meantime, Audi’s giant SUVs will tackle the position of being the model’s flagship fashions, with a brand new era of the Q7 because of be launched by the tip of 2025.
The unique A8 was unveiled in 1994 that includes the bespoke weight-saving Aluminium Area Body. The A8 hid its revolutionary engineering behind a good-looking, if overly by-product physique that seemed an excessive amount of like a stretched A6.
Whereas the unique A8 and its successors by no means usurped the Mercedes-Benz S-Class and BMW 7 Collection on the gross sales charts, it did blaze a path for the widespread use of aluminium and different light-weight supplies to enhance gasoline consumption.
It’s doable to argue, the Thirteenth-generation Ford F-150, launched in 2015, wouldn’t have made the change to an all-aluminium physique had been it not for the A8 twenty years earlier.
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