Audi "Positioned Well" for Coming Fuel Economy Crunch

Audi "Positioned Well" for Coming Fuel Economy Crunch

By Bill Visnic

DETROIT — Audi of America Inc. is ready for a projected shift in consumer demand toward more fuel-efficient vehicles, said its top technical executive.

At the recent Detroit auto show, Michael Dick, Audi AG’s member of the board of management for technical development, told AutoObserver, “I think we are positioned very well” for any increased focus on fuel-efficiency in the U.S.

“Our history is to make highly efficient cars,” Dick said, noting Audi and its parent, Volkswagen Group, were the first European automakers to introduce new-age, direct-injected turbocharged diesels to the passenger-vehicle market in 1989.

He said Audi and VW pioneered the “downsized” four-cylinder gasoline engines that also employ direct injection, and turbocharging to mimic the power and torque of larger-displacement power plants. Automakers such as Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp., among others, also recently have promoted their development efforts for similar engines.

Dick said Audi has a company-wide “roadmap for 2012” initiative that has earmarked efficiency improvements throughout the vehicle, in areas such as aerodynamics, rolling resistance and friction.

But regarding a subcompact model smaller than today’s entry-level (for the U.S., at least) A3, Dick said there has been no decision about whether Audi will import a planned production version of the Metroproject concept (unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show in October), a car he calls the “spiritual successor” to the radical but now-discontinued A2 and likely to be dubbed A1.

A production A1 would joust in Europe with the new and successful BMW 1 Series, among other premium subcompacts. And although BMW is preparing to launch the 1 Series in the U.S. in just a few months, Dick said Audi still is contemplating the potential for the A1 in the U.S.

Other Audi sources say it is a virtual certainty the U.S. market will not see the A1 in its first gestation. Audi certainly has not burned up the sales charts in the U.S. with its smallest car, the hatchback A3 — a high price and a hatchback have not endeared the A3 in this market. And some analysts have questioned Audi’s ability to profit from an even smaller car, given prevailing currency exchange rates and the fact Audi and VW have no manufacturing capacity in North America.

Perhaps rather than smaller, Audi can go lighter, Dick suggested. He said “lightweighting,” for which Audi has a long history, will be one of the company’s highest priorities moving forward. He said the company’s target is to make all new models lighter than the generation that preceded them.

When Audi introduced the A2 in 1999, it was the first volume-production car to use an all-aluminum body. In 2001 the A2 1.2 TDI became the world’s first five-door car to break the ballyhooed “3-liter” fuel-consumption bogey, meaning it achieved the equivalent of about 78 mpg.

Drawing on the A2 and subsequent lightweighting experience, Dick said the effect can create a “breakthrough scenario” that allows an engineering cascade throughout the vehicle — if it is mandated the entire vehicle be lighter, engines can be smaller and less thirsty, and brakes and other weighty components can be downsized.

Dick said Audi now is thinking in terms of “dollar per kilogram” — and the first payoff will be CO2 reduction, currently a chief concern among almost all full-line European automakers.

Photo by Audi

Audi’s Metroproject concept car presages an A1 production car.

Michelle Krebs:  is Editor-in-Chief of AutoObserver.com. Follow @AutoObserver on Twitter.