Audi has fallen back into third place in global premium car sales behind Mercedes-Benz and BMW, in part due to the automaker's model cycles. With key arrivals such as the new A4 now available, Audi expects a boost. Audi sales boss Dietmar Voggenreiter said, however, that today's success in the automotive industry is measured by a lot more than volume. He explained why in an interview with Automotive News Europe Correspondent Christiaan Hetzner.
You were in charge of strategy at Audi when it set its target to sell 1.5 million cars by 2015. After selling 1.8 million vehicles last year what is the next goal on the way to 2 million in 2020?
The industry's business model hadn't changed at that time, so the most common goal was to drive volume by expanding into new markets and segments. Of course, increasing global sales remains an important parameter for success and we are heading toward 2 million units by 2020, but we need additional KPIs [key performance indicators] to showcase our broader mobility approach. Pure volume figures don't convey the growth of on-demand mobility services or possible revenue from the sale of anonymized data generated using the swarm intelligence from our cars. These developments are highly complex, so it's currently difficult to quantify them financially.