Why Western Automakers Desperately Need Help From China
This is not your father's Audi.
You won't find a four-ring badge on the grille. There's barely a grille at all, just thin LED lighting and a familiar name with an unfamiliar logo. It's long, sleek and purple. It's a wagon, but one with a silhouette unlike almost any Audi that's come before it. Inside, a screen sweeps from one door to another. Buttons are few and far between.
The new Audi E5 Sportback—officially the AUDI E5 Sportback, in all-caps, to represent the fact that it's technically from an entirely new brand—is what Audi thinks electric-vehicle buyers in China will want. No wonder, then, that it's built in close collaboration with Chinese automaker SAIC, a company that the Volkswagen Group once essentially taught how to make cars.
One trend was abundantly clear at the Shanghai Auto Show this year: in China, the world's biggest car market, the teacher has become the student.