Audi’s profits plummeted. The head of the premium brand said he wanted to overtake BMW and Mercedes. He announced when he is launching the last combustion cars

Operating profit at Audi, the Volkswagen Group’s premium brand, fell 74 percent to 466 million euros ($500 million) in the first quarter from 1.82 billion euros in the same quarter last year.

Revenue fell 19 percent to 13.72 billion euros in the quarter from 16.88 billion a year earlier, Audi said.

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Audi CFO Jürgen Rittersberger said supply bottlenecks, particularly for the V-6 and V-8 engines, had a negative impact on quarterly results.

Gernot Dollner, the new boss of Audi, recently said that he is ready to move the entire company to the electric zone, but this will happen “in the second half of the next decade”, and here he is talking about all major markets, not just Europe . The Audi CEO’s target is to overtake its main German rivals, BMW and Mercedes.

The new CEO of the Audi brand within the VW group has a very clear role, according to his own statements, focused on four points: product, technology, brand and the markets in China and North America. Gernot Dollner stated in an interview with Automobilwoche that he wants to bring the brand back to the fore, through the new projects developed on the PPE platform, Q6 e-tron and A6 e-tron, but also through the new launches of models with both electric engines , as well as with combustion and hybrids.

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That means Audi isn’t abandoning petrol and diesel in all its markets just yet, but is focusing heavily on electric launches, particularly in China. There, the business unit dealing with this market will implement the new platform purchased from SAIC.

“The main theme is clear: we’re all going electric,” says Dollner, who says he expects sales of combustion-powered cars to decline as early as 2026. “The trick for us is a smart rationalization of the portfolio,” says the Audi boss, who also explains how it will manage this evolution: by keeping certain segments and body styles for combustion engines financially sustainable.

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The last launches of Audi’s petrol and diesel engines will be in 2026, according to Gernot Dollner, which means that in 2033 they will go out of production. He reconfirmed that the Landjet project, which also has a correspondent at VW, is in full development, his description being simple: “three partners, two vehicles, a team and a software stack under the same roof”.

Regarding the rivalry with BMW and Mercedes, who each have their own projects on new advanced platforms, Dollner said he has ambitious targets: “Our aim is not only to be on equal footing, but also to get ahead of these two competitors and we have a way to go”.