- audi's head of design, marc lichte, says the upcoming autonomous vehicle that will come out of the automaker's project artemis effort will be a "revolution."
- the vehicle, rumored to be code-named landjet, will be built on the ppe architecture that will underpin high-end electric vehicles from audi, porsche, and bentley.
- it is expected to be unveiled in 2024 and is targeting offerings from tesla with a focus on long-distance traveling.
we asked audi design chief marc lichte in an interview how the company's future vehicle designs will evolve thanks to electric powertrains. in response, he shared a few more bits of information about the automaker's project artemis, its effort to build an autonomous vehicle. the upcoming car "will be a revolution," he said.
the vehicle in question is in a super-high-premium segment, according to the designer, and its use case is long-distance traveling. "we will come up with a radical new concept. this car looks completely different," lichte said. at its core, it will be an autonomous vehicle that would remove any need for controls, and that gives the designers at audi the ability to pursue a new approach to how a car should look.
rumors have circulated that the vehicle being developed under project artemis, which is being helmed by former porsche race-car engineer alexander hitzinger, is code-named landjet. whatever the internal name, the vehicle is expected to be unveiled in 2024 and will be based on the modular ppe ev architecture developed by audi to be used in audi, porsche, and bentley vehicles.
lichte's comments line up with what we've already learned about project artemis, the automaker and vw group's future weapon to take on tesla. volkswagen wants to address tesla's ev market dominance and also to have a self-driving car on the road as a competitor to its autopilot.
the car is currently in progress in lichte's design studio. he tells us that audi will completely change the layout of the interior, while the exterior will be equally different than what we're used to seeing from the automaker. we'll look forward to seeing it.