Audi is standardizing their model names and numbers to make it less confusing

Letters A and Q will remain the designator for low and high floor but the numbers will be straight forward too

Many years ago, those German manufacturers used to have numbers and letters that meant exactly what you were getting. As time marched on, the marketing folks figured out by giving people what seemed like a more powerful car by model nomenclature could be used on a less powerful, lesser equipped car. It was pure marketing trickery, most notoriously used by BMW with M-ing everything and giving numbers that really didn’t’ mean anything except ‘more powerful’ the bigger the number.

Audi on the other hand has been far less complicit in this practice, other than being a bit confusing. You’re telling me the even and odd numbers mean something Audi? The electric things were mostly electric and the odd were not? Honestly, I hadn’t noticed, but looking at the line up, it makes sense.

 “This decision is the result of intensive discussions and also follows the wishes of our customers as well as feedback from our international dealers,” says Marco Schubert, Member of the Board of Management for Sales and Marketing at AUDI AG. “Our nomenclature now provides all customers worldwide with an intuitive orientation in our portfolio. We choose the names of our models in a way that reveals size and positioning at first glance.”

Starting out with the letter, A means low-floor (read: coupe or sedan), Q, on the other hand, means high-floor (read: SUV or some form of lift back ‘sports SUV coupe thingy). The numbers, currently from 1 to 8 were said to “enable a clear classification independent of the type of powertrain”. No more Q4 or Q6 being electric only. The number no longer tells you what motive of power or how big it is.

This change, notably, allows Audi to quietly sneak gasoline and diesel engines into the cars they didn’t offer them in. The Q4 and Q6 were electric only, whereas the Q8 was electric or gas, and no odd numbers were electric. By standardizing the bigger the number, the bigger the car, they can add whatever motive of power into any chassis.

For the size of the grunt under the bonnet, you’ll have to look at the already established trim codes. E-tron, TFSI, TFSI e, TDI, etc., all will remain, and Audi has decided not to confuse us in a different way by calling the version of the Q5 the Sportback TFSI e… oh wait that’s an actual trim! They couldn’t call it a plug-in hybrid, instead they’re sticking with the Audi-speak of ‘Turbo Fuel Stratified Injection electric (TFSI e)’.

Cheers!

M. T. Blake

Instagram @autohabitblake

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