For reasons beyond our understanding, Audi refused to install the famous Four Rings on the luxury SUV version of the first VW Amarok. The second-generation pickup truck is now on Ford Ranger foundations, so that’s very unlikely to happen. However, a new report from Car speculate the folks from Ingolstadt are keen to give a belated answer for the Mercedes G-Class. An electric off-roader could happen to take on the upcoming EQG.
Immediately after the debut of the Activesphere concept this week, the British magazine claims that Audi leadership will approve the EV to be taken anywhere for production. If it gets the green light, this adventurous electric SUV should launch sometime in 2027, some three years after the EQG went on sale. Car whether on good authority it will not be based on the Premium Platform Electric (PPE), or on Ford’s T6 architecture which already underpins the Ranger and Everest SUVs along with the Amarok.
The Volkswagen Group’s Scalable Systems platform has been pushed back closer to the end of the decade, so Audi’s ladder frame electric SUV is unlikely to use the SSP. Instead, it could mechanically be coupled with the VW Group’s revival of the “Scout” name with a pickup and SUV slated to arrive in 2026. Audi design chief Marc Lichte said “there is room” for such a model, adding “there is potential because there is only two premium players.”
He’s clearly referring to the G-Class and Defender, with the latter also confirmed to spawn a pure electric derivative in the second half of the decade. If the electric SUV is going to get the stamp of approval, Lichte says it won’t have the boxy styling: “It’s not going to look like the G-Class and it’s not going to look like the Defender, I promise you. It’s going to be something else.”
Logic tells us that “something else” would be in the same vein as the Activesphere pictured here. Audi’s design chief said his team already had a “concrete idea, a very concrete idea” for what a rugged electric SUV would look like. Using a dedicated EV platform will result in a short overhang, which will consequently increase the approach and departure angles.
However, the project is still in its early stages as Lichte said it was too early to tell whether top brass in Germany had approved any of the proposed designs.
