Audi Cancels Electric A-2 and A-1 Entended Range E-torn

[larry4pyro]

Interesting, De Nysschen, Who made the statement that the Volt is a car for idiots has left to join Nissan/Infinity

Nissan taps De Nysschen, former chief of Audi of America, to lead Infiniti

Read more: http://www.autonews.com/article/2012...#ixzz1wsCjnpdY

[Dan & Nan]

I wasn't surprised to see non-EV folks celebrating Audi's news, but Volt & Leaf folks shouldn't be happy that a potential ally is putting their car on the back burner. If there's only a few EV choices, and most are $38K econoboxes, EV is in trouble. EV needs development and that only comes from money. The Volt needs classy company for EV to grow and gain acceptance so I'm sad that Audi is pressing the pause button.

I want innovation and that comes from competition.

[norcal]

VW is still planning to do an electric Golf. Saw some running in NorCal on CA-85. They might be just repositioning their market approach.

[cnicholson]

Audi's decision sounds like a perfectly rational business decision. Just because everyone agrees that EVs will be a core market in 10-15 years doesn't mean you need to rush a car to market now. As any entrepreneur will tell you, "seeing the future" can be a curse. Too many mistake a clear view with a short distance and fail to plan their journey accordingly.

If 10 auto manufacturers had spent what GM and Nissan spent on the Volt and Leaf, so we had 10 models from 10 companies to choose from (instead of 2), would the combined sales be 5X higher than we are seeing? Definitely not. And yet neither GM nor Nissan are making ANY profit on the cars that do exist. If your job is to make a profit now and in the long term, you probably keep some R&D cooking in the background, but you DO NOT ramp production on new models right now.

The job of corporate executives is to make money for shareholders, not waste their money trying to change the world.

[detroitsongbird]

So who's job is it to spend money on R&D that may potentially change the world?