Audi's A8 and A7 To Lead Charge Of 15 New Models Over Next 20 Months

15 new models in 20 months? Completely new models, or variants on current themes?

The problem with the A8 is not feature based. THe problem is the A8 simply does not look like a commanding large luxury vehicle. Taut styling from the smaller cars is wrong for the segment. ANd Audi still does not understand that/

Audi's "record" sales are a bit of a fallacy and are definitely the product of "creative use" of data. They have had a modest % of improvement, but their sales are FAR behind BMW and Mercedes Benz. Audi would need an additional 150K in volume in the USA to achieve parity with Mercedes.

Men lie, women lie, numbers don't. MDarringer is at it again. I swear, VAG must have fired him or someone in his family at some point.

bw5011 wrote “…numbers don't [lie]…”

But they can be spun, misrepresented, and misunderstood. Wasn’t it Mark Twain who said “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics”?

Here’s an example: Company A had 2% sales growth over the previous year, while Company B has 32%. Company B is obviously doing much better, right? You’d want to buy Company B’s great products, or at least invest in them, right? These numbers are telling us that Company B is more popular than Company A, and arguably better, right?

Here are some more details: (FYI, the two companies are direct competitors)
(1) Company A’s unit sales went from 12,827,562 to 13,084,113
(2) Company B’s unit sales went from 90,875 to 119,955
(3) Company B’s unit sales are about 0.9% of Company A’s

Without seeking or knowing these additional details, one could easily come to the wrong conclusion when looking solely at the year-over-year percentage increase.

I believe that’s what MDarringer is pointing out with Audi. Every quarter, they brag that they have an uninterrupted quarter-to-quarter unit sales increase, and this sounds good in isolation. But when you compare Audi’s total unit sales to MB or BMW (direct competitors), then you see less brag-worthy facts emerge.

Similarly, people love to see a graph that “goes up and to the right” uninterrupted. Audi’s sales numbers tell that story. However, history shows us reality is almost invariably a non-linear progression of peaks and valleys, and where you see a perfect “up and to the right” graph, you should be reasonably suspicious that something creative is happening to make it appear so.

The A8 will determine the styling of the next A7 and A6. It will not follow the A4. Regarding features, it will be the first Level 3 autonomous vehicle available for sale.

If that image is correct, the new A7 is disgusting.

If that image is correct, I'll be buying one.

MDarringer, you say Audi has had modest success, however they have come from far behind to one of the top three luxury makes globally. Their average transaction price has continued to increase while MB and BMW keep adding less expensive models to grow.

They are still 125-150K units behind parity in volume with Mercedes.