Audi CEO Markus Duesmann has confirmed the Audi A1 hatchback won’t return for another generation.
“A lot will depend on the final Euro 7 target. We know that offering combustion engines in the smaller segments in the future will be pretty difficult because the costs will go up. Therefore, we won’t have a successor to the A1,” he told Automotive News.
There is no word when exactly the discontinuation will happen. The A1 was last redesigned in 2018, and its predecessor had a lengthy nine-year run.
“We have to cut back. We don’t want to add the same portfolio electrically and we do make purpose-built electric cars because we can offer more functionality in purpose-built electric cars”, Duesmann said earlier in 2021.
The Audi CEO also said there was a strong need to prune the brand’s combustion-engine portfolio over the next ten years as its range of electric vehicles continues to grow.
Its e-tron crossover will soon be joined by the e-tron GT sport sedan, while Audi will also release a new mid-sized electric crossover in 2022 called the Q5 e-tron.
It’ll be followed by a production version of the A6 e-tron sedan concept. Both will use the new Premium Platform Electric (PPE) co-developed with Porsche.
Audi has already announced it will only launch pure electric cars from 2026 as the company shifts away from plug-in hybrids.
It plans to only sell all-electric vehicles by 2033, though ICE-powered vehicles could last longer in China.
It’s arguably too early in the second-generation A1’s run to see how it’s faring in Australia.
Introduced at the very end of 2019, its first full year on sale was therefore 2020 – a nasty one for the industry – and just 504 A1s were sold against 1284 Audi Q2s.
It’s faring much better this year, with 411 sales to the end of June. However, that’s still less than half the tally for the Mini hatchback range.
The first-generation A1 reached a zenith of 2113 sales in 2016 and Audi shifted at least 1200 of them every other year.
It was introduced as a belated successor of sorts to the high-tech A2 not sold here, which ended production in 2005.
While the A2 used aluminium construction, dramatically hindering its profitability, the A1 shared its platform with other Volkswagen Group light cars like the Volkswagen Polo.
The current A1, likewise, shares its MQB A0 platform with the current Polo and, among other vehicles, the Skoda Scala and Kamiq and Volkswagen T-Cross.
MORE: Everything Audi A1
