M has gone on record saying they don’t feel like their customers are particularly concerned about the lack of noise. But are you confident of keeping your fan base in this move to an EV?
I think we have a perfect example with the RS e-Tron GT. This was our first high performance EV out of Audi Sport and you can already see that people who drove the before are moving into the electric world [and are] completely open for the electric world. We believe that sound plays a major role also in electrification. Therefore, we also decided to bring a specific RS sound to the RS e-Tron GT. This is not like a combustion engine - it's transformed into the electric world but also shows the performance.There’s more to come and we need to sharpen that. We are learning. We are happy that we had the chance to position such a car in the market, before our competitors came, to learn and get feedback from the customers.
So in five to 10 years, you have our S customers who are coming out of the digital age and maybe they are not missing the [engine] sound. You need to look at what target group you are aiming for.Performance is not a problem at all. Secondly, with theand the RS, we also need to bring a specific differentiating design and we need to make it more sharp. So, edgy, sporty - people love to have these elements in the electric age.
Also, what kind of digitalisation topics you're bringing into your cars. Today, people are paying attention to hardware stuff, like rims, seats, exterior parts. But what is the mirror to that on the digital side? You need to create value to the customer from that side.