Audi EV U-Turn: Have the Germans Finally Got Bored of Being Sensible

Buckle up dear reader this could be earth shattering. Over at  Audi, you know the German company famous for making four identical cars in different sizes, have finally woken-up and have realised that not everyone wants to spend £60,000 on a silent washing machine with headlights.

Yes, your read it right folks, the big news is that Audi has rescinded its “EV-only” policy. Which is a posh way of saying: “Oops. Sorry. Our bad.”

You may well remember, because they certainly banged on about it enough, that Audi had boldly declared they’d stop developing new combustion engines by 2026 and be fully electric by 2033. That was the plan to follow the rest of the hemp trouser wearing herd. A plan as rigid and over-engineered as a German Tiger Tank.

But now that plan has been thrown out of the window like last week’s sauerkraut. And I, for one, am very happy and not the least bit surprised.

Has the electric dream become a bit of a nap?  Let’s not beat around the carbon-neutral bush: electric cars are fine. They’re fast, quiet, and great if you enjoy waiting in a motorway service station next to a broken charging point while your children scream in the back seat and you get a sauna as you discover that your aircon doesn’t work when the battery is flat, or you suffer from hypothermia in colder climates as the heater shuts down to conserve battery when the car’s not moving.

The problem is, most people don’t live in a typical Scandinavian utopia. They don’t have heated garages, driveway chargers, or a desire to trade in their diesel A6 Avant for a car that requires apps to open the boot.

Audi have come to this stark realisation now. Sales of their electric fleet, like the Q4 e-tron, which looks like someone sneezed while designing a Kia, have been underwhelming, to put it politely. Despite all the talk of the future being battery-powered, customers apparently didn’t get the memo. They are not the only ones though like Volvo and Ferrari and Toyota before them they now know that EVs are only a part of the solution 

So Audi, in a moment of rare honesty, went: “Actually, we’re going to keep making petrol cars. And hybrids. And things that go brum-brum when you press the pedal.” And I for one applaud them.

This isn’t just about Audi, mind you. The entire car world has been pulling a very quiet, very awkward U-turn lately.

Ferrari, the patron saint of “no, you can’t drive this in the rain”, has also pushed back their all-electric future. Because they realised that a silent Ferrari is just a very expensive blender. Meanwhile, Volvo who once promised to go full electric by 2030 have started gently whispering things like “well… maybe 90% electric… and maybe we’ll keep a few hybrids… just in case…”

It’s like watching a group of people at a vegan dinner party slowly realise they’d rather be at a barbecue.

What this means for mere mortals like you and me is that common sense has finally won.

Internal combustion isn’t dead yet. Not while there are petrolheads who understand that the soul of driving isn’t found in a 0–60 stat or an over-the-air update. It’s in the rumble, the rev, and the sheer ridiculousness of a V8 doing its thing on an empty country road.

Audi now says it’ll keep developing combustion engines and hybrids into the next decade. Which means the next RS6 might still scare children and set off car alarms, instead of sounding like a laptop powering up.

And thank the motoring gods for that.

Electric cars are like oat milk: fine for some, good in certain situations, but no one actually prefers it. And now, even Audi the company that would automate breathing if they could has admitted as much.

Lets celebrate Audis U-turn. Here’s to combustion. And here’s to the hope that the future of driving won’t be decided by people who think a car is just a smartphone with wheels.

As I’ve always said: the internal combustion engine didn’t become irrelevant. It just became unfashionable for five minutes. And now, it’s roaring back.

God help us all. And please, for the love of Nürburgring, make it loud and Gnarly.