Audi has pushed the start of production of its all-electric A4 to March 2029 at the earliest, from a plan of mid-2028, because the Volkswagen Group platform the car depends on is not ready, Handelsblatt reported on Wednesday, citing company sources.
Insiders quoted in the report expect a later start still, at the end of April or the beginning of May 2029.
The prior plan was a 2028 market launch on a mid-2028 production start.
Audi’s Chief Technical Officer Rouven Mohr told GoAuto in the summer that there was “no need to correct” that date. Showroom timing for the car would follow the spring 2029 production date by months.
Chief Executive Officer Gernot Döllner had said in October 2025 that the A4 would return as an electric car on the group’s Scalable Systems Platform, 2028 at the earliest.
Volkswagen and Audi declined to comment on an SSP delay. Audi insiders described the change to Handelsblatt as “usual shifts in the development phase.”
Why the Platform Is Late
The A4 e-tron is to be among the first cars on the SSP, the architecture Volkswagen announced in July 2021 as the eventual successor to both its MEB volume platform and its PPE premium platform.
Five years on, both remain in production, with the Q6 e-tron, A6 e-tron and Porsche Macan on PPE and the ID range on MEB, and the SSP has yet to carry a car.
Handelsblatt‘s account, as carried by German trade outlets, gives three reasons the platform has slipped.
Volkswagen has cut the SSP from eight variants to four and is leaning harder on shared parts to keep the programme manageable. The price of that simplification is time.
Döllner is reported to have added a 48-volt electrical system to the A4 programme.
That is the car’s low-voltage network, which runs the control units, sensors and zonal controllers, and is separate from the traction voltage. Volkswagen’s investor technology update of September 2025 specified the SSP at 400 volts for front-wheel-drive cars and 800 volts for rear- and all-wheel drive, with a zonal electronic architecture, and the A4 as a premium car would sit on the 800-volt side.
The software layer for that architecture, SDV 1.0, developed with Rivian through the joint venture Volkswagen announced in June 2024, was designed around a 12-volt low-voltage network and has to be adapted to 48.
The report also cites cost pressure and protracted coordination inside the group.
The electric Golf and the electric T-Roc, both on the same platform, slip with it. One account has them now discussed as 2030 cars rather than 2028.
The Naming
The A4 nameplate itself has been in limbo.
Audi rebranded the last combustion A4 as the A5 two years ago under a scheme in which even numbers meant electric and odd numbers meant combustion. The scheme has since been abandoned, with the current A6 sold in both combustion and electric form, and Döllner has called it a mistake.
The last combustion A4 ended production in 2024, when the A5 took its place. The electric car is expected as a saloon and an Avant.
The Platform’s Slide
Under Herbert Diess, the SSP was to arrive by 2026 to compete with Tesla. Investor materials in 2024 gave “2026+.” By late 2025, the first SSP cars were talked about for late 2027 with a broader wave in 2028.
In October 2025, Döllner put the A4 at 2028. In summer 2026, Mohr said no correction was needed. On Wednesday, Handelsblatt reported spring 2029.
If the A4 e-tron becomes the first SSP vehicle, in 2029, the platform’s start will have slipped by about three years from the original ambition.
The September 2025 investor update presented the platform as highly versatile, covering the group from volume cars on lithium iron phosphate batteries to premium ones, with autonomous driving and parking in the software scope.
Twelve months later it has been cut from eight variants to four.
