Volkswagen Group premium brand Audi said the relevant supervisory and management boards of Audi, VW Group and FAW Group had confirmed Changchun, in northeast China, would be the headquarters of the newly founded Audi-FAW company. At the ceremonial signing in Changchun and Beijing on Monday (18 January) the companies also confirmed Audi AG and Volkswagen Group China would have a 60% share of the new JV, making the company – founded for local production of fully electric models on Audi’s Premium Platform Electric (PPE) co-developed with Porsche – the first cooperation company with a majority interest held by Audi in China.
“With the new Audi-FAW company in Changchun, we are further expanding our presence on the Chinese market and strengthening our position as a manufacturer of fully electric premium vehicles through local production,” said Audi chairman and China chief Markus Duesmann. “In doing so, we are continuing the Audi success story in China and actively helping to shape the transformation of the Chinese automotive industry as it moves toward sustainable mobility.”
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Local manufacture of the first PPE model produced jointly with FAW is scheduled to start by 2024. Changchun is also the headquarters of the joint venture FAW-Volkswagen with which Audi has been involved for over 30 years and, in addition to other locations in China, already produces many Audi models locally.
The founding of the new PPE company was officially scheduled for the first quarter of 2021, following stakeholder consent and Chinese regulatory approval.
“This deepened partnership between Audi and FAW heralds a new era of electrification as the next ‘golden decade’ for Audi on the highly important Chinese market,” said Audi China president Werner Eichhorn. FAW Audi Sales will assume responsibility for selling cars produced locally by FAW-Volkswagen as well as fully imported Audi vehicles and future cars produced at the joint PPE plant.
This partnership with FAW will allow Audi to increase the number of locally produced models to 12 by the end of 2021. The models produced by its second partner, SAIC Volkswagen, are set to be introduced in 2022.
Audi entered China in 1988 and has delivered almost 7m vehicles there. In 2020, it sold a record 727,358 vehicles.
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