Audi UK finished 2021 leading the premium car segment as well as completing the year as the overall number two best-selling brand with 117,993 vehicle sales last year. That represented a 9.3 percent increase over 2020 despite the challenges of the global pandemic and semiconductor shortage.
A surge in demand for fully electric vehicles (EVs) drove Audi UK’s performance during 2021, with the total number of electric vehicles sold amounting to 11,777. This represents almost 10 percent of the brand’s sales for the year.
Globally, the Audi brand sold a total of 81,894 electric vehicles, an increase of 57.5 percent year-on-year. This is a huge increase and shows the transition to electric cars is gathering pace at a rapid rate and is important for the future of the motor industry.
Andrew Doyle, Audi UK director, said: “Despite significant headwinds, the performance by Audi UK in 2021 was remarkable, securing a record-breaking market share of 7.2 percent which cemented us as the number one premium brand.
“Our growing portfolio of fully electric e-tron models helped to accelerate that result and the continued appetite we are seeing in 2022 for our fully electric models, especially the Q4 e-tron and Q4 Sportback e-tron, will ensure our share of the EV market continues to grow.”
By 2025, Audi plans to have more than 20 fully electric models in its portfolio. Starting in 2026, the brand will exclusively bring new fully electric models to the market.
The company’s clear commitment to electric mobility is also apparent in its capital expenditure planning. Based on plans approved at the end of 2021, Audi will spend about €18 billion (£15 billion/$21 billion) on electrification and hybridisation between 2022 and 2026. With total investments of around €37 billion (£31 billion/$42 billion), that means that almost half will go toward these two forward-looking fields.
Audi set a strong example with the presentation of the Audi e-tron GT and the Audi RS e-tron GT at the start of 2021. In particular, the Audi Q4 e-tron and the Audi Q4 Sportback e-tron also played a central role in the electrification strategy of the company. With these four new models, Audi has more than doubled its product portfolio of fully electric models in the past year.
In the UK, the e-tron and e-tron Sportback continued to be the best performing electric vehicles. Combined they accounted for 7,405 of Audi UK’s total sales for 2021, outselling the entire Q7 model line-up by almost two to one. The brand has announced that from 2026 all of Audi’s new releases will be 100 percent electric cars.
