Audi is one of the biggest names in the automotive business right now, and it’s rightfully part of the big three German premium car brands.
Known for popularizing the use of AWD in everyday cars and creating the first-ever fast station wagon, the RS2 Avant, Audi stood up to the notoriously difficult challenge of becoming a highly desirable premium brand.
However, Audi is not without its issues. The old Allroad models and their air suspension were notoriously terrible, as reported by Jalopnik, and there’s also the small matter of the naming convention.
For years, Audi model names haven’t really made much sense, and even though it swore off the meaningless extra numbers, the confusion doesn’t appear to be stopping anytime soon.
The Origin of Audi’s Confusing Names
There are two main sources of confusion as far as Audi model names are concerned. The first are the extra numbers they tack on before the engine type, which, thankfully, are no longer in use. The second is the initial run of electric cars. Let’s start with the former.
A few years ago, Audi announced that they would be abandoning the engine capacity to describe which engine the model has, opting instead for a number system that doesn’t make sense to anyone.
According to the Audi Mission Viejo dealership, those numbers denote a horsepower range. For example, if you see an Audi with 45 TDI on the back, it uses a diesel engine with anywhere from 167 to 201 hp.
Of course, nobody understood the numbers this way. I can’t tell you how many people have asked me something along the lines of “Does the Audi Q8 50 TDI use a 5.0-liter engine?” I wish. But no, it has a 3.0-liter turbodiesel, and the 50 means it has between 281 and 308 horsepower.
Not too long ago, as reported by Motor1, Audi announced it would be abandoning this numerical nonsense, in a bid to simplify it for the customers and make it a little bit easier. Okay, that’s great. What about the electric cars, then?
The Confusion Isn’t Slowing Down Anytime Soon
Audi’s first bespoke electric car was the e-tron SUV, and then came the e-tron GT luxury sedan. Not only did this depart completely from Audi’s ordinary naming convention, it was pretty confusing.
Eventually, the e-tron SUV became the Q8 e-tron, to clarify where it’s positioned in the lineup.
Ingolstadt also came up with the idea of giving all its EVs even numbers, while the ICE-powered cars would have odd numbers in the name.
We’ve seen a couple of examples of this already, the new A5 is ICE, but the Q6 e-tron and the Q4 e-tron are both EV only. Of course, with this naming idea, the e-tron part of the name now seems a little unnecessary, but I digress.
The Audi A5 is the replacement for the A4 in Audi’s lineup, but because it still uses gas and diesel power, it gets an odd number and essentially takes over for the previous A5 Sportback as well.
Meanwhile, Audi also introduced the A6 e-tron, an ugly electric sedan below the e-tron GT. Are you keeping up? With all these rules, you would think that the replacement for the combustion-powered A6 would be called the A7, right?
In fact, this was pretty much confirmed by a prior Audi CEO, as Motor1 also reported. But nope, it is, in fact, called… the A6. The new A6 was recently leaked on YouTube, where it was posted by the Automotive World PR channel.
I gotta be honest, the sleek all-black wagon in the video looks pretty spectacular, and certainly better than the bloated A6 e-tron. But, when I noticed the name, I couldn’t believe it.
After sticking to this new idea for barely a few years, Audi is immediately abandoning it. I’m glad they dropped the confusing horsepower denotations from the model names, but just as we got used to and accepted the idea that the EVs would have even numbers, we can now throw all those rules right out the window.
Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if Audi renames the A5 back to A4 when the time comes to facelift that car. Are you confused yet? I bet you are. Don’t worry; I am, too.
How Can Audi Stop The Confusion?
Well, the good news is, they kind of seem to be stopping it already. The A6 being the mid-size sedan in the lineup is something that we’ve been used to for a good 30 years, so I’m glad they’re keeping it the same. The A6 is such a household name, anyway, it wouldn’t make much sense to change that.
Audi is also abandoning the two-digit horsepower ratings, which is fantastic news. It’ll make us forget that VW no longer builds the 5.0-liter V10 diesel. As Autopian tells us, maybe that’s for the better. Personally, I can see the whole odd-number-even-number thing making sense, but I also think that the e-tron badge is more than enough to distinguish the EVs from the ICE cars.
Audi, please drop all the nonsense; your old naming system was just fine.
