According to the latest information provided by our German colleagues fromAutomobilwocheAudi’s ambitious Artemis autonomous car project would be shelved due to delays and cost overruns. A real blow for development of self-driving carswho are we still waiting for on our roads?

Indeed, the replacement for the Audi A8, scheduled for 2024 and illustrated by the Audi Grandsphere concept presented last year, should be late. This concept announced the brand’s future technologies with four rings, among which we find level 4 autonomous driving.

Self-driving cars: internal conflicts at Volkswagen

At the Volkswagen Group, the Artemis project was supposed to contribute to the development of future high-end cars equipped with autonomous driving, which would also be found in Bentley and Porsche, in addition to Audi.

But a few months ago Porsche has already distanced itself from the Artemis project, and preferred to develop its own future electric cars from A to Z with its own production at a factory in Leipzig, Germany. For this, the Stuttgart firm had to pay the Volkswagen group an amount of 110 million euros as compensation.

An autonomous taxi from the company Cruise found itself in the middle of the night, stopped at a green light. A situation that could have caused serious collisions on the streets of San Francisco. https://t.co/P3fRdiSicI

— AutoPlus (@AutoPlusMag) December 14, 2022

Volkswagen Group: focus on embedded software

Oliver Blume, the new head of the Volkswagen concern, wants to focus the efforts of the German automobile giant on development of software platforms. Enough to reinforce the built-in functions of the group’s future production and make people forget about the computer errors that affect, in particular, the 100% electric Volkswagen Golf and Porsche Macan.

We’ll have to wait a little longer for the autonomous car: there shouldn’t be any major innovations in this regard from the Volkswagen Group for the next eight years. But the technologies of the Artemis project can still be reused in future cars of the German group.

A new generation of electric modular platform

The priority of the Volkswagen concern remains electric cars: the German manufacturer is preparing the next generation of a modular platform designed entirely for electric vehicles. Under the name SSP (Scalable System Platform), it should replace the MEB platform found in Volkswagen, Audi, Skoda or Cupra, as well as the PPE platform in Porsche and Audi.

The SSP platform should provide even more charging power thanks to the 800 V architecture. To charge a Volkswagen in a few minutes thanks to ultra-fast charging stations will therefore have to wait at least until 2028, when the first SSP-based models appear.

@AudiFrance unveils the Urbansphere, a high-end autonomous and 100% electric minivan concept car designed for urban use, find out in the video! pic.twitter.com/VjL6neH9HB

— AutoPlus (@AutoPlusMag) April 21, 2022

Source: Automobilwoche