Audi seems to have a more concrete deadline for the fuel engine. As of 2026, it will no longer introduce new models with combustion engines. After this, fully electric cars will gradually cover the entire range.
Audi has already announced several times through CEO Markus Duesmann that it has the end of the combustion engine in its sights. At the beginning of this year, it was announced that Audi will stop completely ‘within 10 to 15 years’. Things got a little more concrete in March, when Duesmann indicated that the current generation of engines is also the last. According to Duesmann, developing a new generation would no longer be profitable. As an extension of this, Duesmann is now further sharpening the conversation with the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Audi puts a red circle around 2026 as the year it really starts to wave the fuel engine out.
Not that there will be no new Audi with a fuel engine for sale as of 2026, but from that year on, the existing range will logically be finished and nothing new with a combustion engine will be added. In the years that follow, purely electric cars will increasingly fill the gaps that arise when cars with combustion engines (including hybrids) come to the end of their life cycle. In 2030, the last Audi with a fuel engine may be sold. Earlier Audi Sport indicated that 2030 is also the year that no RS model is no longer sold without a plug.
The year 2026 can be directly linked to the Euro 7 standard. It is expected to be introduced around 2025. Duesmann previously indicated that Audi wants the current generation of engines to meet ‘the new requirements’ instead of starting from scratch again. At the end of 2020, there was still a warning that Euro 7 would actually mean the end of the fuel engine, but it recently emerged that it seems to be getting a little milder. Mild enough probably for Audi to keep the current engines on for a few more years, to say goodbye to them bit by bit.