Profile of location

Audi has built cars at the Ingolstadt site for 75 years. This is where AUDI AG has its headquarters; around 40,000 employees (as of December 31, 2021) work in Ingolstadt to achieve “Vorsprung durch Technik”.

From the initial idea to the finished automobile, the entire production process for the Audi Q2, Audi A3, Audi A4, Audi A5, and Audi Q6 e-tron takes place at the Ingolstadt plant. The Audi Ingolstadt location continues to develop into a networked digital factory for the electrified future. Modern production systems and high-tech solutions enable highly efficient, sustainable manufacturing. With the start of production for the Audi Q6 e-tron, a fully electric model is now rolling off the line in Ingolstadt for the first time. By making the assembly lines more flexible across the board and thanks to a battery assembly facility located nearby, the location is well prepared for the gradual shift to electric mobility and production of additional fully electric models.

The largest production facility in the Audi Group is the economic engine of the region and, as the primary plant and a high-tech site, it brings five locations together in one think tank:

• Audi Ingolstadt factory (headquarters with Technical Development.)
• Münchsmünster manufacturing site (module/system production and press shop.)
• Audi Neuburg high-tech area
  - Headquarters of Audi Sport racing technologies and Audi Formula Racing GmbH
  - Development site for the entire drive unit (power unit) for Audi’s Formula 1 project, with new extension
  - The Audi driving experience center
  - Technical Development divisions with a focus on driver assistance systems and integrated safety (FAS/IS)
  - Home of Ducati Motor Deutschland GmbH
• Proving grounds Neustadt a. d. D. (high-security area of Technical Development)
• incampus technology park

The Audi Forum Ingolstadt attracts people from the region and around the world, as well as customers who come to pick up their new cars there.

• It combines production, tradition, shopping, a cinema, dining facilities, driving enjoyment, exhibitions, and conference rooms. Audi delivers cars at the customer center.
• The Audi Forum Ingolstadt offers events and exhibitions as well as guided physical and digital tours of the plant and the Audi museum mobile.

incampus technology park: incampus is a high-tech area to the southeast of Ingolstadt. Audi and its partners are working on the future of mobility on this former refinery site. The site includes the Vehicle Safety Center, an Audi IT Center, and offices for Volkswagen’s software company CARIAD, among other things. The remediation of the heavily contaminated site was a collaboration between the public sector and Audi.

• Among the features of the Audi Vehicle Safety Center on incampus are run-up tracks with a total length of 250 meters, a mobile 100-ton crash block, and the ability to collide two vehicles at a 90-degree angle.
• The IT Center supports AUDI AG’s future-oriented projects with ultra-modern hardware and software. The nearly 10,000 square meters of floor space house around 800 servers and data cabinets.
• The Energy Control Center provides power and controls the modular energy concept for incampus, based on three cornerstones: a water-based pipeline system, reversible heat pumps, and a cross-energy concept. The buildings on incampus are heated with waste heat from other buildings, such as the IT Center, through the pipeline network and reversible heat pumps. This conserves energy and upcycles energy that would otherwise go to waste unused.
• CARIAD, which pools the Volkswagen Group’s software competencies, has had a Competence Center at incampus since late 2020. The technology park offers IT experts from the software company an attractive environment for flexible work.
• The city of Ingolstadt and Audi have used cutting-edge technology to revitalize and remediate an industrial wasteland, a former refinery site, without sealing additional areas.
• This renaturalization project is one of Germany’s largest and an unprecedented environmental project in Bavaria.

Smart city and mobility of the future: Audi is planning for the future and has joined up with the city of Ingolstadt and other partners to work on innovations in mobility for the Ingolstadt region. The spectrum ranges from measures for appealing cycling options and public transport initiatives to the use of 5G technology. Collaborating with partners like CARIAD and the Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt (Ingolstadt Technical College) on the IN2Lab project is producing a system for safeguarding automated driving functions. IN2Lab is playing a pivotal role in constructing the digital testing area for automated and networked driving in Ingolstadt. The test track links incampus with the Ingolstadt South highway junction and leads seamlessly to the Digital Testing Area Autobahn on the A9. Networked and automated driving functions are tested there on the section between Nuremberg and Munich.

Another exemplary project is Audi’s traffic light information service, which is helping to improve traffic flow. Thanks to digital traffic infrastructure, Ingolstadt is the first city in Europe where production models have been networked with traffic lights. The data collected in the process will form the basis for further projects. For example, traffic light data is being supplemented with sensor data and, with the help of artificial intelligence, used to help optimize traffic flow on another test field in the Ingolstadt area.

Audi was also involved in a virtual test field for networked, autonomous driving in urban traffic in Ingolstadt. Under the project name SAVeNoW, the project partners investigated aspects of traffic, such as efficiency and safety, while also testing the benefits of autonomous driving functions in a realistic model of the city of Ingolstadt over 34 months. The resulting simulations and sensor data are used to analyze and evaluate innovative ideas for traffic planning. Audi is also involved in initiatives to optimize bus and rail traffic. There has been a train station on the factory grounds since the Ingolstadt Audi stop opened in 2019. The joint project of the Free State of Bavaria, the city of Ingolstadt, Deutsche Bahn, and AUDI AG is sustainably improving mobility solutions. Audi employees living in the vicinity take an environmentally friendly train ride to work without traffic jams or searching for parking spots.

With a specially developed digital tool, Audi is supporting a project to make local public transport in the region even more attractive. The so-called residential cluster records commuter flows at Audi and is also available to the project partners. The project leverages these values, which, together with supplemented mobility data, helps to expand local public transport services in targeted ways.

Audi has also been advancing future-oriented mobility at its sites in Germany since 2018, thanks to a network with charging infrastructure for electric vehicles. Building on the first charging points created in 2018, the company is also continuing to expand this network at the Ingolstadt location.Audi now operates more than 3,100 charging points at its German locations. This includes internal charging points (e.g., for research vehicles) and charging points for employees and visitors. At the Ingolstadt location, external charging points are available in AUDI AG parking garages and near the Audi Forum Ingolstadt.

Audi is also promoting additional charging facilities in Ingolstadt. For example, the Ingolstadt utility company plans to build a quick-charging park on the incampus site.

Münchsmünster

Audi efficiently packs high technology into a 54-hectare site in Münchsmünster in the Center of Excellence for high-tech suspension, aluminum structural, and pressed parts. This site has been using innovative production methods since 2013 to produce form-hardened sheet metal items and aluminum die castings for lightweight construction. The module/system assembly operations and press shop in Münchsmünster are an important aspect of automotive manufacturing in Ingolstadt. More than 700 employees work there in three shifts. In 2023, approximately 17 million automotive parts were manufactured.

Neuburg

Audi Neuburg is home to Audi Sport racing technologies and, since 2022, to Audi Formula Racing GmbH. The organization is developing the drive unit for Audi’s Formula 1 project in a new 3,000-square-meter building at the Audi Neuburg location. The building primarily houses additional test stands for testing the drive unit. The Energy Control Center was also expanded to supply the new test building with power. Those parts of the Ingolstadt location’s Technical Development team focusing on driver assistance systems and integrated safety, are also located at Audi in Neuburg. The high-tech area, which opened in 2014, is also home to the Audi driving experience center, which offers various training and driving experience programs. The headquarters of Ducati Motor Deutschland GmbH, which has also been located there since 2021, manages the brand’s sales activities and dealerships in Germany.

Technical Development

The Technical Development (TE) division of AUDI AG is headquartered in Ingolstadt. Around 10,000 people work here on innovations for the cars of the future.

Employees in areas ranging from design to engineering shape the entire product creation process—from design, new vehicle concepts, engine and transmission development, powertrain electrification, electrical and electronic development, and car bodies and suspension systems. Interdisciplinary collaboration enables customer-focused solutions for strategic fields of innovation, such as digitalization, sustainable drive types, and premium mobility experiences.

Technical Development works on software development hand-in-hand with CARIAD, the Volkswagen Group’s software company.

• Networked development through systems engineering: New forms of collaboration across different company divisions are creating the conditions for mastering highly complex technical systems. The focus is on production requirements and functions.
• The Design Center is a digital design factory. Audi has developed a new, innovative design process that combines the advantages of cutting-edge 3D visualization with the strengths of traditional handcrafted modeling. The teams work here in an area of approximately 37,180 square meters.
• The Aggregate Center, a workplace for engineers, houses a variety of test equipment and measuring technology. All the drive types are developed and thoroughly tested here.
• The High-voltage battery project house was opened in 2012 as a Center of Excellence integrating Technical Development, Production, and partner companies.
• Powered up at the Electronics Center: All electrical devices, cables, sensors, and control units are subjected to comprehensive tests at an early stage here to make in-vehicle digitalization a reality.
• Design check for the virtual Audi “to go”: In the virtual reality (VR) studio, development teams analyze realistic vehicle models that are true to detail before they are made.
• The Lighting Assistance Center is a 120-meter-long light tunnel that cars can drive through. This is where Audi’s pioneering lighting technology is created, with innovations such as matrix LED headlights and laser light.
• Wind-resistance at the wind tunnel center with the aeroacoustics, thermal, and climate wind tunnels: Experts work on optimal aerodynamics at speeds of up to 300 kilometers per hour.

Mobility of the future

• The transformation to electric mobility and digitalization demands new key competencies, which Audi is developing in its workforce.
• A primary focus is promoting the next generation of skilled workers. As a future-oriented company, AUDI AG continuously adapts its vocational training and dual study programs to reflect the transformation and prepare for strategic future jobs. More than 1,280 vocational trainees and 160 dual students work at Audi in Ingolstadt on the future of mobility. In the fall of 2023, 372 young people began their vocational training, and 82 students started a dual bachelor’s or master’s degree program at the Ingolstadt site. Audi is focusing on targeted qualification and advanced training programs for its employees to promote lifelong learning as part of its training-to-retirement approach to the transformation.
• Over the past two years, the company has invested around 250 million euros in the training and development of its employees.