Marking the beginning of a new chapter for Audi’s premium New Energy Vehicle brand AUDI: the first production model – the AUDI E5 Sportback – made its debut at the Volkswagen Group Media Night ahead of Auto Shanghai 2025. It is set to enter a market that is powering the transformation of the global automotive industry.
“With our new China-only brand AUDI, we are continuing to push boundaries,” says Gernot Döllner, Chairman of the Board of Management of AUDI AG. “The E5 Sportback offers the very best qualities of Audi, reimagined for and tailored to customers in China.”
“The AUDI E5 Sportback is our first model based on the Advanced Digitized Platform, and it delivers on our brand promise: the best of both worlds. Audi’s DNA and engineering excellence is blended with China’s digital ecosystem and innovations, specifically tailored for our tech-savvy customers,” says Fermín Soneira, CEO of the Audi and SAIC Cooperation Project.
The four-door AUDI E5 Sportback is a bold, fully electric fastback with dynamic proportions (length: 4,881 millimeters, width 1,959 millimeters, height 1,478 millimeters). It offers a power output of up to 579 kilowatts and a maximum range of 770 kilometers. Four distinct powertrains offer rear-wheel or quattro drive for a dynamic driving experience, accelerating from 0 to 100 kilometers an hour in 3.4 seconds. Built on the new jointly developed Advanced Digitized Platform, the E5 offers next-generation connected vehicle functionality and over-the-air updates for all vehicle systems. Market introduction will begin in summer 2025.
A new era of Audi in China
The new brand AUDI – spelled in capital letters, without the four rings – stands for a shared DNA but clear differentiation. It marks the beginning of a new era for the company in China, ensuring rapid response to the evolving demands of the Chinese market.
Rooted in its core brand ethos of “Vorsprung durch Technik,” Audi has tailored its products to the unique needs of Chinese consumers ever since it became the first global premium car manufacturer to enter the market 37 years ago. Building on its outstanding pedigree in China and over a century of engineering excellence, the company is now breaking new ground together with SAIC, establishing a new collaboration model for the co-development of the Advanced Digitized Platform and a new generation of state-of-the-art connected vehicles.
By leveraging both companies’ strengths across two time zones, a global team of Audi and SAIC engineers worked closely and simultaneously in Germany and China, managing to cut the development time of the brand’s first production model, the AUDI E5 Sportback, by 30 percent.
AUDI E5 Sportback: unmistakable Audi DNA for China’s electric future
The result of this thoughtful collaboration between engineering and design teams in Ingolstadt, Germany, and Shanghai, China, the AUDI E5 Sportback offers luxury tailored to Chinese lifestyles and tastes, merging Audi’s superior driving performance, iconic design, and premium quality with an AI-powered connectivity experience.
Design: celebrating Chinese individuality
The AUDI E5 Sportback offers a fresh interpretation of the Audi design language, reimagining iconic elements of the brand’s heritage – athletic proportions, bold wheel arches, and a striking front and rear – with fluid elegance and unexpected nods to Chinese preferences. They include circular wheel arches over traditional quattro fenders and the reinterpretation of the familiar Singleframe with the new AUDI Light Frame.
The exterior balances minimalist elegance with dynamic emotion, achieved through assertive lighting graphics, rounded wheel arches, and a confident Sportback silhouette that commands the road.
The front and rear design is radically new: minimalist in form, and maximalist in function. Featuring a futuristic grille, pronounced shoulders, and a digital surface loop complemented by illuminated logos at the front and rear, the E5 is designed to leave an impression.
A sleek black loop circles the front and the rear, seamlessly combining all functional areas – lights, sensors, air curtains, radar, and spoilers – into one cohesive, expressive feature.
True to Audi’s design heritage, aerodynamics shapes the AUDI E5 Sportback’s exterior. Elements like the floating front spoiler, a rear wing, and air curtains are elegantly integrated, optimizing efficiency without compromising aesthetics.
Lighting design: where technology meets emotion
Emphasizing the car’s minimalist ethos, the slim headlights and functional modules are invisibly integrated in the sleek black loop. Further balancing subtlety and spectacle, position lights remain hidden when inactive, only providing a mesmerizing glow. When activated, more than 1,000 individual light units integrate triangular light sources to form the distinctive AUDI Light Frame – a signature element that blends warmth with engineering precision.
In addition to its distinctive lighting design, the AUDI E5 Sportback features Audi’s signature Matrix LED headlight technology. With precise beam control and intelligent zonal illumination, it enhances nighttime driving safety and comfort – maximizing vision while preventing glare for other drivers.
Drivers can choose from a range of welcome animations, each crafted to suit different tastes. Their sequences pay homage to Audi’s heritage while taking inspiration from Shanghai’s dynamic skyline.
Interior: inspired by legacy, designed for tomorrow
Designed in clear horizontal layers, the interior integrates luxurious materials with subtle comfort features: immersive speakers, ambient natural lighting, and hidden intelligent air vents complemented by a fragrance diffuser with three signature scents. The result is a calming retreat amid the urban bustle of China’s megacities.
The cabin blends luxury with cutting-edge technology, offering intuitive touchpoints for effortless connectivity and thoughtful functionality. The curved AUDI panoramic display shared by driver and passenger is seamlessly integrated with the digital exterior mirrors, while the center console offers open storage for two phones and 50-watt wireless charging with active cooling. The elegant and comfortable seats feature headrest speakers.
Carefully selected materials include natural elements to uplift the cabin. The doors feature pioneering three-dimensional lamella-shaped wood inlays with indirect light, inspired by contemporary architecture. Indirect natural light accentuates tactile surfaces, balancing organic warmth with advanced technology. Above, the panoramic glass roof features automatic dimming.
A new era of digital interaction
The AUDI E5 Sportback redefines in-car technology with AUDI OS, an intuitive, lightning-fast operating system that adapts seamlessly to each driver’s needs.
Powered by the QUALCOMM Snapdragon 8295 automotive chipset with 5-nanometer precision and the ability to perform 30 billion operations per second, AUDI OS offers an intuitive experience designed to make the vehicle occupants’ lives easier.
A stunning, immersive 27-inch pillar-to-pillar 4K display visualizes the metaphorical flow of information. Customizable screen layouts ensure important information is always prioritized in the top-level menu, facilitating swift navigation via touch gestures. Every touch surface – whether physical or digital – has been carefully designed to reinforce a sense of calm, clarity, and ease.
AUDI OS interfaces with a rich ecosystem of entertainment and apps, easily accessed via a facial-recognition-enabled in-app store that is fully integrated into the digital world of China. Smartphone connectivity is seamless, synchronization effortless.
AUDI Assistant: the personal companion
Staged at the heart of the car is the AUDI Assistant, an AI-powered touch- and voice-enabled avatar that aims to humanize digital interaction. More than just a functional interface, the digital companion embodies the brand’s spirit: both precise and playful, balancing cutting-edge innovation with charisma and warmth. Drivers can calibrate the assistant’s demeanor with the swipe of a finger and always remain fully in control. In-car interaction is reimagined as a fluid, human-centered dialogue between driver and car.
Dynamic computing power enables natural language processing, personal memory, behavior select (Vohico by ByteDance), haptic feedback, and more.
The touch-operated AUDI Control Bar on the center console adapts contextually to any function or content, combining with the display to form a premium design piece.
Advanced Digitized Platform to power new generation of connected cars
Built on the new jointly developed Advanced Digitized Platform (ADP), the AUDI E5’s zonal electronic architecture enables next-generation connected vehicle functionality and over-the-air updates for all vehicle systems.
The new platform rapidly integrates China’s leading new energy vehicle (NEV) supply chain and will form the basis for a new generation of state-of-the-art China-only connected vehicles with electric drive systems in the mid-size and full-size segments.
Exhilarating driving dynamics for a new era
Tuned by Audi’s research and development center in Germany, the AUDI E5 Sportback embodies Audi’s legendary driving dynamics, reimagined for the electric era. Accelerating from 0 to 100 kilometers an hour in as little as 3.4 seconds, the E5 is available in four fully electric variants featuring either rear-wheel or quattro all-wheel drive at power outputs of 220, 300, 425, or 579 kilowatts.
Progressive all-wheel steering is supported by adaptive air suspension with Continuous Damping Control (CDC) for a smooth, refined ride.
Designed to balance exhilarating dynamics with everyday usability, a battery capacity of up to 100 kilowatt-hours enables a maximum driving range of 770 kilometers; thanks to ultra-fast 800-volt charging, the car can replenish 370 kilometers of range in just 10 minutes.
Advanced driver assistance systems designed for Chinese driving scenarios
The LiDAR-based AUDI 360 Assisted Driving system supports a safe and relaxing driving experience that has been rigorously tested to meet safety standards. The vehicle is equipped with 29 perception hardware units, including a 100-line LiDAR with long-range detection capability, three long-range millimeter-wave radars, twelve ultrasonic sensors, eleven cameras, and several multi-modal sensing units. This comprehensive sensor suite – combining perception and visual technologies – enables enhanced driver assistance and improved safety. Engineered for complex urban driving conditions, the E5 is adept at predicting tricycles and delivery riders like a veteran of Beijing’s hutongs, reflecting true resonance with local driving scenarios.
Adaptive Cruise Assist enables nationwide highway and urban driving assistance. The vehicle can assist customers to bypass obstacles, identify traffic lights, initiate driver-triggered lane changes, and more.
Active Safety monitors dangerous and emergency situations for the customer and intervenes to prevent accidents as far as possible. The function has been enhanced to handle China-specific scenarios such as two-wheelers, three-wheelers, and children, as well as nighttime driving.
Parking Assistance supports multiple types of parking spaces (vertical, diagonal, parallel parking). Additionally, cross-floor memory parking assists drivers in maneuvering the vehicle to a memorized parking space and then parking the vehicle, particularly in specific settings such as residential garages, office buildings, and shopping mall parking lots.
The beginning of a new era
Following the E5, two more all-electric AUDI models will be launched in 2026 and 2027, as a continuation of Audi’s largest ever product initiative. As a new expression of “Vorsprung durch Technik,” AUDI represents an exciting next chapter and a bold leap into the future of mobility.
