In May this year, SAIC Motor and Audi officially signed a cooperation agreement, officially launching the joint development of the Advanced Digitized Platform intelligent digital platform. Both parties will jointly develop multiple luxury smart electric new vehicles for SAIC Audi.

Recently, there have been rumors that the electric vehicle models produced by this cooperation project will adopt the "Audi" logo instead of the globally recognized "four rings" logo.

Why use the "Audi" logo for the new project?

On the day the cooperation agreement was signed, there were doubts about how to allocate resources between "North Audi" and "South Audi", and which was more important.

Song Feiming, CEO of the Audi·SAIC cooperation project, said directly that competition would not occur internally and that there would be differentiated product segmentation. If there is competition, we hope it will be with Audi FAW jointly targeting external competition.

Jia Jianxu, General Manager of SAIC Volkswagen, also stated that the new platform is a software-featured digital platform that will be differentiated from Audi's global PPE platform in Changchun. There will also be no competition between products based on this platform.

Analysis suggests that SAIC Audi's new project "Open a New Chapter" is a strategic move after learning from "Chinese-style" pure electric vehicles, allowing it to "start afresh" with a new generation of high-end smart connected vehicles in China, enjoying the spillover value of the original Audi brand while operating independently from the German Audi brand. This solves the long-standing channel issues between North and South Audi partners while establishing a new system in a legitimate manner.

Looking back at Audi's development history, the company was officially established in 1909, and its logo has undergone several changes over the decades. It was until 1968 that Audi officially adopted the familiar "four rings" logo. However, since 1968, some models still hang the "Audi" logo on the side.

However, it was after Audi chose the "four rings" logo that the brand achieved faster development, and now people are more familiar with the "four rings" logo. If Audi abandons the "four rings" logo, will people still recognize Audi's products? Especially since the new logo will be used on electric models, Audi's progress in the new energy vehicle sector is not smooth. In 2023, Audi's global pure electric vehicle sales were only 178,000 units.

Moreover, SAIC Audi's sales performance has always been average. In September 2021, SAIC Audi A7L began pre-sales, and deliveries started in January 2022. Since then, SAIC Audi Q5 e-tron and SAIC Audi Q6 have been launched successively. In 2022, the sales of SAIC Audi A7L hovered around a few hundred units.

In 2023, SAIC Audi's sales exceeded 30,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 377.8%. Among them, Audi A7L sales exceeded 20,000 units. In the first four months of this year, SAIC Audi's sales exceeded 10,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 177.5%, with A7L achieving a year-on-year increase of 282.7%. However, even so, compared to FAW-Volkswagen Audi, SAIC Audi's annual sales of around 30,000 units still have significant growth potential. This also shows that SAIC Audi's brand appeal and product strength still need to be improved.