Volkswagen will announce the location of its upcoming U.S. plant in a matter of days, but the German automaker won’t be the only VW Group brand to be making a decision on U.S. production in the not-so-distant future, a new report finds.
It was reported early this year that Audi was considering a U.S. production plant, and the luxury automaker announced on Friday that it will make a decision on the matter by next spring.
Audi CEO Rupert Stadler told Handelsblatt that an independent Audi factory in the U.S. is still on the table, but the automaker is also considering sharing VW’s new facility. “But of course it is also imaginable that we build cars together with Volkswagen in its planned U.S. factory,” he said.
According to Automotive News, Stadler also revealed that the Audi A1 small car would not be sold in the U.S., due to Americans wanting “big cars, but with increasing fuel efficiency.” Stadler said Audi would instead be focusing on the next-generation A4 and Q5 models.
Audi plans to sell 200,000 vehicles in the U.S. annually by 2018 and would likely need a U.S. factory to achieve that goal.
