Ex-Audi manager spoke out: The company bet on the wrong horse, ignores customers, kills key cars and drowns in bureaucracy

He has a doctorate in mechanical engineering and is behind the best sports models of the brand in recent years, yet he left the car company. According to him, she is heading down a completely wrong path, committed to a dream that cannot come true.

Dr. Sebastian Grams is a bit deceiving with his body as he looks like he just dropped out of college yesterday. But the reality is that already 21 years ago he received his first degree in mechanical engineering at the Duale Hochschule Baden-Württemberg, followed by two more at the Technical Institute in Karlsruhe. Already during his studies, he started working in the Volkswagen group, especially in Audi, where he reached the position of executive director of the Audi Sport division.

If you like the latest new Audi with the RS moniker, models like the RS3 Competition, RS4 Competition, RS6 GT or the farewell R8 GT, Sebastian Grams is responsible for them. Audi Sport seemed headed in the right direction with him at the helm, but a few months ago he surprisingly left the company after more than two decades. Why? He talked about this in an interview with Automobilwoche, from which it is clear that our concerns about Audi’s current stance are unfortunately completely justified.

For a while, it looked like better times were coming for Audi under Gernot Döllner after the electricity-obsessed Markus Duesmann left the car company. For some time, he gave the impression that he would reconsider the bet on electric cars only, but in the end he also put all his eggs in one basket. For Döllner, the discussion around this issue is perhaps not even a topic anymore – the internal combustion engine is dead to him, the new motto is electricity or nothing at all. With that, Dr. Grams could not live and considers such a path to be wrong.

“Manufacturers who have chosen a multi-path strategy, i.e. are open to different types of propulsion, are at least better off than manufacturers who bet only on electricity. I think it’s dangerous to rely only on electromobility,” says Grams, adding that Audi has bet on the wrong horse. And it suggests that the path taken by BMW is better than the one taken by Audi.

Ultimately, he too believes that electromobility is the future, but when will that future come? What he doesn’t like about Audi’s current operation is the ostentatious disregard for customer preferences and the imposition of a single solution regardless of their wishes. “I’m more of a fan of carefully guiding the customer along this path. The infrastructure must be ready for electromobility, and so must the sellers. Such a transformation is a process that will not take place in black and white,” Grams told Automobilwoche, alluding to the naivety of manufacturers who believe that they will simply “switch” to electric cars and nothing bad will happen.

According to him, it will not work because the Chinese are further along in this field and have the support of the state, which cannot compete with a European car company. “The Chinese state is behind the new Chinese manufacturers and has made it clear that they will be massively subsidized and promoted. Chinese manufacturers are generously financed, even if from the enormous investments in almost 100 manufacturers, maybe only 10 will survive in the end. But these ten will be really dangerous for Germany and Europe,” says the German technician and manager.

In addition, the EU not only does not support local manufacturers in this way, it is perhaps not even appropriate, it is constantly throwing sticks under their feet with new and new regulations. The result is long development and inefficient functioning. In addition, Audi itself willingly joins the more official than business management. “It takes only 48 months from development to finished product in China – no German car manufacturer can keep up with that,” says Grams, adding that Audi isn’t even trying.

In particular, the nonsensical reaction to the emissions scandal surrounding TDI engines paralyzed the company’s functioning: “Extreme number of processes, bodies and many other commissions. It is more and more supervisory structures that have slowed down the functioning of the entire organization. It is no longer possible to act independently or make quick decisions. These additional management lines and new responsibilities are increasingly paralyzing the whole of Audi,” says Grams.

As an enthusiast, he is ultimately most disappointed by the killing of models that create the image of the whole Audi. Let’s expect more such victims in the future, but Grams names the end of R8 production for all of them, just because it does not fit into the strategy of betting on battery cars. According to him, it was an enormous brand image booster and now it is dead. At the same time, he is convinced that the car company should make cars with which it would show “what is still possible to achieve with combustion and hybrid engines”. But there will be nothing like that, the R8 will only get an electric would-be successor, which has no chance to appeal to the current clientele and show anything revolutionary that other cars of the same type would not tempt.

Sebastian Grams did not want to be part of this development and preferred to wave to the entire automotive sector. From May 2, he joined the management of the company IFCO Systems, which deals with containers for transporting food. In the shadow of his interview with Automobilwoche comes the news about Audi’s quarterly results, which go hand in hand with the results of everyone who blindly bets on electric cars.

The brand with four circles in its emblem achieved a profit of 1.8 billion Euros in the first quarter of 2023, but for Q1 2024 it is at 466 million Euros. That’s a drop of nearly 75 percent, which some attribute to partial problems with the production of the V6 and V8 engines, as Auto News mentions, but we all guess that alone wouldn’t be enough for such a drop. After all, Audi itself talks about “falling sales, logistical delays and a difficult situation with deliveries”. Doesn’t most of it have to do with neglecting the desirable and pushing the unwanted to the fore?

Dr. After 20 years of work in the industry, Sebastian Grams had the entire Audi Sport at his command, but he did not agree with the further direction of the company. And so now he prefers to head a company dealing in containers for transporting food. Photo: Audi

Sources: Automobilwoche, Jak Auto News, Audi

Peter Miller

All articles on Autoforum.cz are comments expressing the editor’s or author’s opinion. Except for articles marked as advertising, the content is not sponsored or similarly influenced by third parties.