How the mighty have fallen in their biggest bread & butter car market, They’re no longer seen as a premium flagship brand there any more with other domestic brands outselling them 8-1.
Sales have collapsed so they’ve teamed up with SAIC in a JV to make BEV’s, but they want Audi to drop the four-ring logo for the Chinese car market.
Oh! Dear! It just keeps getting worse & worse for the big German VAG brands, The USA is bringing out new rules this month banning Chinese software & hardware. Software that is primarily designed & manufacture in China will now be illegal in the USA.
VAG group have spent billions on new plants in the USA & all their cars run on Chinese software, The same goes for Volvo. It’s not just BEV’s either, all their ICE vehicles have Chinese software in them too. What a mess.
So they just change to US manufactured software to go with the US manufactured cars.Less logistics and not contributing to China’s ‘defence’ budget.Whats not to like.
US software is worse than German software unless it’s Tesla, that’s why VAG spent $millions buying up Chinese software companies to get their cars to work, GM & Ford are still way behind the Chinese.
The whole western commercial relationship with China is based on slave labour wage rates.In exchange for western technology and cash.
Which helps and gets spent on the Chinese military.
Which isn’t our friend or ally.
my niece got her first good job about a year ago in HR in London working for a U.S. firm that sells computers that folk in the stock exchanges use.These have 30 phone lines live at any one time on a lappy.Anyhoo theyve offices all over the world but someone has decided that the London branch is surplus so in China theyre training up a replacement for each London employee and once they are up to speed my niece has to call in a worker and tell them the bad news youre finished. She is just a kid telling folk whove been there donkeys years you are out.2 a week by all accounts
Here’s what the CEO of Ford Jim Farley said in an interview about developing software a couple of months ago.
"Farley shared how difficult it has been to develop the software system for EVs and why vertical integration is so important.
“If I explain to the listeners how crazy the software system is and why it’s so difficult for legacy car companies to get software right.“
“We farmed out the modules that control the vehicles to our suppliers because we could bid them against each other.” said Farley.
“So Bosch would do the body control module someone else to do the C control module someone else do the engine control module, and we have about 150 modules and semiconductors all through the car.”
“The problem is the software is all written by 150 different companies. They don’t talk to each other. So even though it says Ford on the front, I actually have to go to Bosch to get permission to change their C control software.”
“So even if I had a high speed modem in the vehicle and I had the ability to write the software, it’s actually their IP and I have 150 completely different software, programming languages.”
“So that’s why at Ford we’ve decided with the second generation product to completely insource electric architecture and to do that you need to write all the software yourself. But just remember car companies haven’t written software like this, ever.”
“So we’re literally writing how the vehicle operates, the software to operate the vehicle for the first time.”
The need for any of this this technology obviously has nothing whatsoever to do with driving a car from A to B or EV or ICE.
Audi, Horch, DKW, Wanderer is the logo
The new design doesn’t look the same without the iconic four rings.
Though modern ice cars are all peizo injector, stepper motor throttle body, egr valve, variable vane turbo, MAF, crank and cam sensor, IAT with potentiometer go fast pedal, without some ECU processing it’ll only just about run on easystart.
But no doubt it will be instantly recognisable by the lack of driver skills and manners.
Looks like a ctrl/c ctrl/v of a Hyundai or a KIA to me
Yes you’re right, This fastback was jointly designed by Audi & SAIC with 765HP on tap. 
I can’t understand why AUDI /SAIC created an “AUDI” brand that isn’t an AUDI.
Perhaps Audi were the junior party, but apart from the snob value of the badge, I cant imagine what Audi had to bring to the table.
It wasn’t that long ago when Korean cars were derided as cheap copies of Japanese cars (and if you go back 30 years before, Japanese cars were … well, you know): European cars, however, were the benchmark.
And here we are now, where a new Audi looks like a knock-off of a Hyundai (Albert Biermann is no slouch).
Perceptive comment, given how big SAIC is these days in the PRC and SE Asia.
Not cars, but Hyundai are making some pretty decent brush-cutters and chain saws at reasonable prices.
Maybe not up to professional use but better than the average cheap stuff that only lasts one or two seasons when abused by some amateurs… 
The Chinese think they can buy prestige, just look what they’ve done to MG.
One of the Chinese companies photocopied a Range Rover, a few years back. It only impressed Chinese buyers.