Audi may be getting into the pickup truck market.
It’s far from a guarantee, but when the U.K.’s Autocar asked Audi Chairman of the Board Markus Duesmann if an Audi-badged pickup were possible, he answered, “we will present — not too far from now — maybe something.”
Believe it or Not, They Have Something to Work With
Audi is known in the U.S., mostly, as a rival to BMW and Mercedes in the sporty luxury car realm. But the company is the luxury marque of global giant Volkswagen, which does have its own pickup on the way. The VW Amarok has been sold in Europe since 2010.
VW has an all-new Amarok in the works, this one sharing its underpinnings with the popular Ford Ranger.
Luxury-Badged Trucks Exist Overseas
Luxury automakers tend to stay out of the truck market in the U.S. Americans buy more luxury trucks than Europeans do. But we tend to buy them from the same name brands we buy work trucks from. A fully loaded Ford F-150 or Ram 1500 can cost as much as a luxury car and carry most of the same features, but it wears a Ford or Ram badge.
Overseas, luxury trucks sometimes wear more expensive logos. Mercedes, for instance, built its X-Class pickup in concert with Nissan until 2020.
So an Audi-badged truck would be alone as a pickup with a European luxury name on the tailgate, but Audi could build one off the Amarok platform without designing it from scratch.
Electric Platform More Likely?
However, it might be more likely for them to start from a clean sheet. The company has promised to sell nothing but electric cars as soon as 2026.
Since electric cars keep all of their moving parts in a single, skateboard-like unit that fits beneath the floorboards, manufacturers can easily adapt their designs to make different types of vehicles. The upcoming Chevy Silverado EV, for instance, shares its platform with several GM-branded electric crossovers.
An Audi pickup designed to enter the rapidly growing field of electric trucks could easily share a platform with other EVs from VW brands, like the upcoming Volkswagen ID.Buzz electric microbus.
