Audi will lose Artemis project with VW group restructuring

As part of the internal restructuring that the Volkswagen Group is carrying out, Audi will lose the Artemis project, through which a family of luxury electric cars equipped with a level 4 autonomous driving system was being developed. Although its initial launch was scheduled for 2024, the truth is that the delays accumulated by CARIAD in the creation of the new software have caused the initiative to progress very slowly.

At first, three vehicles were going to be developed under the Artemis umbrella for the Audi, Bentley, and Porsche brands, but the latter decided to take control of its model a few months ago. All indications are that the new Volkswagen Group CEO, Oliver Blume, will scrap the Artemis project altogether under the company’s new roadmap.

The new strategy aims to make the group’s proprietary software competitive and ready to hit the market by the end of the decade, as unrealistic dates were being handled under the leadership of Hebert Diess (the models based on the MEB platform arrived on the market with software full of problems due to the haste of its release).

The first autonomous cars of the Volkswagen Group will be launched by its commercial vehicle division. Although Audi will maintain its goal of commercializing autonomous models during the second half of the decade, it will no longer play a leading role in their development, a task that will fall entirely to CARIAD.

Audi grandsphere concept

Porsche will launch the SSP Sports platform in 2026… but with software 1.2 instead of 2.0

The Volkswagen Group will continue working on the 2.0 software, which should see the light of day in 2028 with the help of the SSP platform, but in parallel, it will continue to develop platforms 1.1 (for the MEB) and 1.2 (for the PPE). The latter has been rebranded as “Premium Software” and will debut with the Audi Q6 e-tron and Porsche Macan in 2024.

Audi grandsphere concept

Although the arrival of the SSP platform has been postponed for two years, the company’s luxury electric cars (Audi Landjet, Audi Landyacht, Porsche Panamera, etc.) will use an architecture called SSP61 or SSP Sport, a sports version of it developed by Porsche that at the time of its launch will incorporate software 1.2, not 2.0. This base would become an intermediate step between the current J1 platform of the Porsche Taycan and the future SSP.

Elenor Kling

A tech lover and generally a car enthusiast who likes to do a lot of research and share knowledge.

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