Audi and Porsche to share vehicle architecture

AUDI and Porsche have released a joint statement confirming they will collaborate on a number of different development areas including vehicle architecture, electrification, digitalisation and autonomous driving.

Audi chairman of the board of management Rupert Stadler said the initiative would bring together the brightest ideas from both companies to develop strategies for the future.

“The best brains of both companies will together set the technical course for the future,” he said.

“We are united by many shared values, above all, by our pursuit of the best solutions and the best offerings for our customers.”

Collaboration between the two Volkswagen Group subsidiaries is nothing new, having previously worked together in the field of SUV development.

The two brands will spend the coming months outlining their partnership – which will be mapped out up to 2025 – with each co-developed project to be jointly headed by a representative from each brand.

According to Porsche chairman of the board of management Oliver Blume, the two brands will be careful to avoid co-development to the point that their cars and brands become interchangeable.

“Together, we will make faster progress in the race for the mobility of the future,” he said. “We will utilise the expertise of both companies and take advantage of synergies.

“We will cooperate wherever it makes sense. But we will also be very careful to maintain the differentiation between our brands.

“A Porsche is always a Porsche, and that will remain so in the future.”

Along with developing a joint vehicle architecture, electric vehicles and autonomous technology will be areas where the two German marques will collaborate.

While exact details are yet to be revealed, it is possible that the Porsche Mission E is one of the vehicles that will receive input from Audi, due to the fact that it is an all-new vehicle that will be released in coming years, and also because Porsche released a single image to go with the announcement that shows the silhouette of the Mission E.

Audi is also a brand that is working on increasing its electric and hybrid vehicle portfolio, such as a production version of the e-tron Quattro concept, a pure EV small car to compete with the BMW i3, and the eventual rollout of a hybrid variant of each of its models.

Porsche may also be able to draw experience from Audi in the sphere of autonomous technology, with the latter working on its Piloted Driving program in conjunction with North American tech group Nvidia and Israeli tech specialist Mobileye, which was bought out by Intel last month.

Audi demonstrated its latest advances in January at the CES technology exhibition in Las Vegas, demonstrating a self-driving Q7 SUV fitted with the latest Nvidia-developed technology that allowed the vehicle to ‘learn’ from its driving environment and previous inputs from drivers.