Audi To Focus On Interior Quality And Appearance

The production-ready Concept C (main photo) will launch Audi’s interior design revolution. Speaking to the Australian magazine GoAuto, the company’s chief technical officer Oscar da Silva Martins promised to restore the quality that once earned Audi the highest marks.

– In the future, Audi will integrate Radical Next interior design… We want to be very subtle in terms of screen size and haptic elements. We will pay a lot of attention to real materials. If you see a material that looks like metal, it should be metal. We believe it’s part of our DNA to have some physical elements, buttons and dials to turn, and each one should have that classic Audi click, touch and feel.

Audi’s technical director pointed out that customer preferences differ in global markets and that there are big differences between China and the rest of the world. That’s one of the reasons why the company collaborated with Chinese manufacturer SAIC to establish a separate AUDI brand (without the iconic four rings) specifically for the Chinese market. Cars like the E5 Sportback and E7X have minimalist interiors with huge screen areas and very few physical controls. For the rest of the world, the traditional Audi brand has pledged to move away from oversized screens and bring back the magic of the great interiors of the early 2000s. However, this will not happen overnight. New vehicles are developed years in advance, and their design ideas are locked in long before the first production car rolls off the assembly line. The first mass model to embody Audi’s new interior design philosophy will arrive in 2028, when the A4 returns as an electric sedan.

Meanwhile, the new Q9 SUV and electric A2 should be the last models from the old guard. Ingolstadt has technically already launched a production model that embraces the new approach. It is about the super sports Nuvolari. However, the hybrid supercar is limited to just 499 examples.

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