Audi CEO Gernot Döllner discusses the automaker's strategic shift towards clarity and flexibility in the premium segment, emphasizing a balanced approach to electrification alongside internal combustion engines. The episode also covers significant industry news, including South Korea's response to the ICE raid on Hyundai's battery factory and Stellantis's decision to abandon its 100% EV target in Europe by 2030. Döllner outlines Audi's plans for new model launches and the challenges posed by evolving regulations and market dynamics.
Audi CEO Gernot Döllner talks about the automaker’s focus on strategic clarity and its plans for electrification going forward. South Korea sends a “rapid response team” to bring back workers detained in a U.S. immigration raid. Plus, Stellantis plans to scrap its target of 100 percent electric vehicles in Europe by 2030.
"Do you think that the premium automaker should switch soon to electric 800 volts only? I mean, we did that starting with the e-tron GT four years ago and for us 800 volts is since then the future standard for premium cars."
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Welcome to Daily Drive for Monday, September 8th, 2025. I'm Kellan Walker in Las Vegas.
Today on the show, South Korea sends a rapid response team to bring back workers detained
in an ice raid. Stellantis plans to scrap its target of a 100% EVs in Europe by 2030,
and BMW will introduce 40 models based on its Neu-Class platform. Plus, Audi CEO Geronaut
Dolner joins the show to talk about the automaker's focus on strategic clarity
and its plans for electrification going forward. With these models, we have the youngest portfolio in
the premium segment and the most flexible one. Let's run through all the news you need to know
to keep up in the auto industry. South Korea has dispatched a rapid response team to bring back
more than 300 Korean nationals detained during a U.S. immigration raid last week
on a Hyundai LG Energy Joint Venture EV Battery Factory in Georgia. Officials say they will dispatch
a charter jet to bring the workers home. The Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement,
the team will arrive in Atlanta on Tuesday. The delegation consists of officials from the
Bureau's in charge of protecting overseas nationals and bilateral economic relations,
as well as the consulate general in the U.S. We'll hear more about this developing story in a minute
with our own Carly Shafner. Stellantis will no longer pursue a target of selling only battery
electric vehicles in its European markets by 2030. That's according to the automaker's Europe boss
Jean-Philippe Imperato. Speaking at the IAA Munich Auto Show today, Imperato also said
that the European Union's carbon emissions targets for 2035
are no longer achievable for any automaker. The target calls for only zero emissions cars
to be sold by that date, effectively banning gasoline and diesel cars in favor of battery
electric models. And BMW plans to launch 40 new or updated models based on its Neu-Class
technology platform by 2027. CEO Oliver Zipsa made the announcement at the IAA Mobility Auto Show
where the automaker debuted its first car on the platform, the IX3 mid-size full electric SUV.
Zipsa said the Neu-Class represents, quote,
a massive leap that will shape the entire brand for years to come.
BMW will start IX3 production at its new factory in Hungary this fall.
The European market rollout will start in spring 2026. The US and Canadian launches are in summer
2026. And those are today's headlines. You can find more details on all those stories
at AutoNews.com. Joining me now to talk more about the immigration raid at Hyundai's Savannah
Complex is Carly Schoffner, who covers Hyundai Group and other automakers for us at Automotive
News. Carly, welcome back to Daily Drive. Thanks, Cal. Happy Monday.
All right. So what do we know so far, Carly, about why ICE raided this battery factory?
Well, allegedly, there had been a months-long investigation going on into who exactly was
working at the construction site. And just to clarify, this is the construction site
of the battery venture that's being built on the property. It's a 3,000 acre mega site is what most
people reference it as that also houses the EV battery plant. So there's two separate entities
happening. The EV plant is already producing cars and was unaffected. So this is the joint venture
between Hyundai Motor Group and LG Energy Solution. So after months long, they didn't specify,
they looked into across multiple agencies, federal agencies, including DEA, the FBI, ICE,
of course, even Georgian local police enforcement, looked into the workers that were there,
and they obtained a warrant to go in and conduct the apprehensions. And that was on Thursday.
And what's the impact on Hyundai Group's operations there?
So they haven't said much. Hyundai appointed its North American chief of manufacturing,
Chris Susick, to oversee the whole mega site. So they're conducting an investigation into the
employment practices and also looking inward at their own hiring processes. That's essentially
what it has said. But the battery factory, which is slated to supply batteries to the EVs
coming from the EV portion of the mega site, construction has stopped. The opening of that
site was already delayed. It was supposed to be opening at the end of this year, and now it's
slated for the first half of 2026. So whether it delays opening of the battery factory remains
to be seen. We haven't received confirmation on that, but there is that possibility.
Cool. Interesting stuff, Carly. Thank you so much for joining me.
Thanks.
Coming up, Audi CEO, Garinot Dolner, talks about the future of the automaker and the emphasis
on strategic clarity going forward. That's next on Daily Drive.
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Welcome back to Daily Drive. I'm Kellen Walker. CEO Guernot Dolner has big plans for Audi. He says
the automaker will focus once again on being the challenger in the premium segment.
Dolner recently sat down in Milan with automotive news Europe associate publisher
Luca Shafferi and correspondent Andrea Milan. Here's a piece of their conversation.
They have an unknown source that claims that Audi is pointing to two billion units
in an undefined time frame. And they spec said it says this year we'll reach about 1.71 per
8 million. Audi is not commenting on that story. Makes any sense to give such a target with
no time frame? The target with all time frame never makes sense. As you mentioned,
right now around 1.7 million units per year, we are right now working on our strategy,
which also has clarity and character as our guiding principle. We will internally communicate
that strategy in September. And as part of that, we will then communicate later also a target
for growth and the sales figure. But clearly our goal is to grow profitable over the next years.
You said that clarity, focus and commitment to implementation will not reshape
Audi design only, but the entire company. Could you elaborate on this?
Yeah, absolutely. By working out or on your strategy and then parallel working on the
new products, we found that in both in our car design and in how we rebuild the Audi
organization, clarity is really the guiding principle. Reorganized, Audi internally focused
the organization, took out one management level. So we only have three management levels within
the whole company worldwide, took out 400 roles out of the organization and focused ourself and
implemented an organization that's absolutely clear processes that are streamlined and decision
making that is very close to the product and absolutely focused. And so for our new strategy
and for Audi clarity and also the character to come back to be the challenger and premium
segment, that's also part of that strategy. You had a basically is a fund in third half
with a pretty margin down to 3.3% from 6% per 1% the same period you had before.
The board envisaged a 5% to 7% margin for the full year. Given that the uncertainty
on the U.S. tariffs continues and it looks like that the 27.5% is going to be paid longer
than what we expected. Is this target still achievable or you have to revise it given
high bill of tariffs? We are working hard to stay with the guidance we gave.
For sure there's a huge uncertainty in several parts of our business. We hope and we see that we
will have at least on the U.S. Europe tariff side a stabilization to 15% effective as of September.
And looking forward to also having a solution for Mexico, U.S. and in total,
I mean the first half of the year we had some special effects regarding our
Zukunftsfeinbarung with the Works Council or future pact that we had, the closing of the
Brussels factory and some other issues are beneath U.S. tariffs and CO2 in Europe,
the special effects in the first half of the year.
How do you view the current pace of EV adoption and what is your strategy
for navigating a potentially longer than anticipated transition period for internal
commission engines? I'm quite happy that with me coming to Audi, we gave us the Audi again
agenda as transformation and strategy program and in that we first organized the product
launches of more than 20 new models until the mid of next year. And with these models,
we have the youngest portfolio in the premium segment and the most flexible one as that be
with ICE cars, with plug-in hybrids and with battery electric vehicles. So we have the
perfect setup and we see globally very different transition to battery electric in China. It's
clear a path to to BAF with the specialty of having range extenders that become a class of
their own. In this segment, we see a clear path to electrification in Europe, maybe a little
slower than than I expected two years ago, but especially this year quite an acceleration.
In the US, we see a clear swing back to ICE and plug-in cars, but the perfect for Audi is that
we are flexible. May I just follow up on this? Is your EV share, the growth of the EV share in
your portfolio in your sales affecting margins negatively in the sense that of course EV margins
are lower so far than ICE? We haven't we haven't margin parity yet between battery
electric vehicles and ICE vehicles, but you have to see that after taxes and if you see it after
taxes, we are happy with our swing to battery electric vehicles. Based on the CO2 regulation?
Especially based on I mean Europe is our biggest market, based on this European CO2 regulation
having that in the equation when things look quite good for the battery electric car.
In terms of EU CO2 regulation, there's a big meeting next week in Brussels. What do you expect
or what we envisage related to the 2013-20 for 25 targets? Keep them as they are and more flexibility
scrub them. Yeah, whatever is to be discussed next week, the most important part, the most important
for us is that we have a stable regulation so we can plan with stability for the future.
In Europe and the new US of the five years? I mean in the US there's also in the regulation
quite some change. I mean, IRA will stop in September the seven and a half thousand dollar
support will be gone and maybe also there will be an up to three thousand dollar
reduction on ICE cars so that that will affect the market definitely.
In the US? Yeah, the US, the CAFE CO2. Texas is not the right word, it's
negative penalties that maybe will go away. It's a discussion that's not a final regulation.
Gas gas load? Yeah, also the one is to go. Everything is going well in the US.
PPA, premium platform electric, was called over with Audi and faced some delays. Are
there challenges behind you? Definitely, yes. We launched the cars, brought them,
brought them to the market and with that we introduced more cars with 800 volts,
ultra fast charging and long ranges so we are quite happy with that.
Do you think that the premium automaker should switch soon to electric 800 volts only?
I mean, we did that starting with the e-tron GT four years ago and for us 800 volts is
since then the future standard for premium cars.
For us, we have already in the market or all the time involved so no plan to
offer cheaper model with 400. No. How is Audi addressing the software challenges that have
impacted the wider Volkswagen group and what is your strategy for delivering seamless
and innovative digital experience to your customers? I mean, with the PPE and PPC platforms,
we are right now taking a huge step to implement innovative
electric electronic platforms and in parallel we are already working on the next step as
Volkswagen Group with the Rivian Volkswagen Technology Joint Venture which will for the
cars coming from 28 on deliver a central computational architecture and Audi is in
the lead within Volkswagen Group to develop the first car on that architecture.
Audi CEO Guernot Donner spoke with Automotive News Europe's Luca Schafferi and Andrea Milan.
You can read more of their full conversation at AutoNews.com.
That's Daily Drive for today. I'm Kellan Walker. Thanks to Automotive News Executive
Producer Jake Nier as well as our own Carly Schoffner and Hans Grimel for their reporting for
today's podcast. We also had reporting from Lois Jones of our sibling publication Automotive
News Europe. You can get the latest news on manufacturing, electrification and everything
happening in the auto industry at AutoNews.com. Come back tomorrow for a conversation with
consumer advocate Ralph Nader about his career and what he thinks about the state of automotive
safety in 2025. The auto industry is in real trouble because they can't get the first base
on autonomous vehicles in conventional traffic without the trust of motorists. We'd love to
hear from you. Let us know what you think of the show and the topics we covered today.
Send us an email at dailydrive at autonews.com or leave us a voicemail at 313-444-2774.
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