The petrol-powered Audi R8, which is set to leave production soon, would get a successor model that’s already in development, Audi CTO Oliver Hoffmann said in an interview. It would be an EV partly based on Volkswagen’s SSP architecture that the corporation plans to make standard for 80% of its production cars.
Commenting on the news, Hoffman made it clear that, like the MEB and PPE platforms that it is based upon, the new SSP architecture will provide a solid basis for the company’s staple sports cars. He declined to answer when the next-gen R8 and TT may go on sale, but said that it would happen ‘at the earliest stage’ of SSP implementation. The new platform is scheduled to reach production in late 2020s, so that’s as close to an availability date as we can get at the moment.
The production of the Audi R8 at the Böllinger Höfe factory in Neckarsulm, Germany will stop before the end of the year. Its all-electric successor may wind up with a different name. It is already official that the car will be the most powerful in its lineup: per VW Group CEO Oliver Blume, the SSP platform will let the corporation design vehicles rated up to a cool 1,700 PS (1,677 hp / 1,250 kW) on it.
