GERMANY. Audi will produce electric cars in Mexico. It will do so at the plant it has in Mexico, in the municipality of San José de Chiapa, one hour from the Historic Center of Puebla. From this complex, where the Q5 SUV has been produced for the rest of the world since 2016, an electric variant of the model will come out from 2027.
The German manufacturer announced in the middle of last year that it will stop developing new cars with an internal combustion engine from 2026, and will gradually phase out the production of its internal combustion units in order to have a fully electrified range by 2033. All the plants will form part of the strategy.
“We are in the biggest transformation in the history of our company, and manufacturing is playing a key role,” says Gerd Walker, Head of Production and Logistics at Audi AG. “My goal is to make production innovative, highly efficient and smart, to that end we are digitizing and electrifying Audi’s global production network.”
The Audi plant in Puebla, with 460 hectares, is the only one owned by the company in the American continent and produces all the versions of the model for the whole world. The electric variant will not be the exception.
So far Audi has produced 836,787 units of the Q5, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi). In 2019, the plant began to manufacture a plug-in hybrid variant of the model, which, together with the fully electric one, will gradually replace the gasoline and diesel variants that are also assembled today at the Mexican complex.
The German automaker is the third to announce a production of electric vehicles in Mexico. The first was the American Ford, which at the end of 2020 started production of the Mustang Mach-E at its complex in Cuautitlán, State of Mexico. Months later, in April 2021, General Motors revealed that as of 2023, it would begin production of an electric model. It is a fully electric version of its Blazer SUV in Ramos Arizpe, Coahuila.
The German manufacturer did not reveal the amount of investment that it will allocate to the reconversion of its Mexican plant, but in Brussels, Belgium, where it assembles the e-Tron, it has invested 600 million euros since 2016 to enable the body and paint shop, the assembly line and build a warehouse for the production of batteries.
In addition to the Brussels plant, Audi is also converting its plant in Ingolstadt, Germany, where it currently assembles the Q2, A3, A4 and A5 models, to power. By 2029, it plans to complete the conversion of its plant in Györ, Hungary.
The German manufacturer said at the end of 2021 that advance payments for future vehicle projects had been increased once again, bringing the total to around €37 billion.
Although sales of cars with some degree of electrification in Mexico represented only 4.6% of total sales in 2021, the change towards more environmentally friendly mobility schemes is gaining strength in production processes.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador recently promised that by 2030 50% of the vehicles assembled in the country will be zero polluting emissions. At the end of 2021 Mexico, the production of electric models totaled 58,292 units, just 1.9% of the total.
The Audi plant has the capacity to assemble up to 150,000 units.
