Oliver Blume is Expected to Scrap Audi’s Artemis Autonomous Driving Project Under a New Software Roadmap: Automotive News reports that Volkswagen Group CEO Oliver Blume is planning to cancel Audi’s self-driving project, Project Artemis, in favor of other software projects.
Blume is planning to make the announcement during a meeting of the supervisory board on December 15.
When Herbert Diess failed to make significant headway at VW’s Cariad software division, he was replaced by Blume. Many cars produced by the Volkswagen Group were delayed by many years due to issues at Cariad.
Blume is likely to reveal a new roadmap for the Group’s software aspirations as opposed to focusing so heavily on the self-driving dream, however, this will not prevent the production of autonomous Audis.
VW is still confident that autonomous vehicles will be commonplace by 2030, and that Audi would profit from its work in this area. However, the Ingolstadt company does not plan to launch the technology until the latter part of the decade.
According to the article, the Group’s 1.1 and 1.2 software platforms would both receive continued development under the new software roadmap, with the latter being rebranded “Software Premium.”
VW Group CEO Oliver Blume is expected to scrap Audi's Artemis autonomous driving project under a new software roadmap, Automobilwoche reports.
Under the new roadmap, Audi is unlikely to launch fully autonomous cars before 2030. pic.twitter.com/xi3qFESEax
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Bold
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As reported by Handelsblatt, a German business publication, this will be available for use by Audi and Porsche by the end of the decade, while the 1.1 platforms will be used by the VW Group’s mass-market brands. Volkswagen’s flagship Trinity EV project, which sources say would debut as a crossover rather than a sedan, will reportedly utilize the Software Premium technology.
The earliest stages of Audi’s Project Artemis will be hampered while Blume attempts to clean up the software mess left by his predecessor (in May, the VW Group’s supervisory board called for a new Cariad strategy following years of delays and overspending).
In contrast, in 2026 the Group’s premium brands will debut on the market with a new vehicle architecture created by Porsche. A new electric flagship lineup from Audi, dubbed Artemis, will use this platform (called SSP61) as the foundation for their next Landjet and Landyacht vehicles.
The electric Porsche Panamera will be the first vehicle to ride on the same platform that will also support the range-topping all-electric SUV that will sit above the Cayenne in Porsche’s lineup. The SSP61 is a more powerful variant of the Scalable Systems Platform (SSP) unveiled by the VW Group in 2017.
Although a lot of other businesses in the self-driving area have shown enormous drops in their rate of growth, the Volkswagen Group is still motivated to build autonomous cars in an effort to dethrone Tesla.
Inflating expenses led to the recent closure of Argo AI, an autonomous technology firm financed by Volkswagen and Ford. The Hyundai-backed startup Motional has also recently started firing employees.
The Audi RS e-Tron GT is a terrific example of how far electric cars have gone in recent years. On the other hand, self-driving cars have not stopped improving, but they also do not appear to be as close as automakers had anticipated.