Audi Has a New Research Hub for Working On Next-Gen EV Tech

• Audi opens incampus Ingolstadt technology park in Germany, having turned the grounds of a former refinery into a tech hub that is developing VW Group software for all new models under the Cariad division.

• The Audi facilities on site include a new Vehicle Safety Center with a large indoor hangar for crash testing work.

• The Ingolstadt hub also houses Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt, which is working on connected and automated driving technologies.

After years of painstaking work, Audi has opened a new research and development site in its home city of Ingolstadt, one that will develop the software for the automaker's next generation of electric cars.

Dubbed simply incampus, the technology park will serve as the home of Cariad—VW Group's in-house software division—as well as Audi's new Vehicle Safety Center, while also hosting a number of other companies and institutions including Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt.

And the site itself is perhaps emblematic of Audi's electrification revolution, with the company spending seven years on soil remediation efforts on the technology park's grounds, which formerly hosted a refinery.

This month marked the building project's completion, but Cariad has been based here since 2020, with 2000 employees working on software for several VW Group brands, including Porsche. This software will go into Premium Platform Electric (PPE) models that will be sold under Audi and Porsche brands.

"Together with Audi and Porsche, we're developing the 1.2 electronics architecture here, the Volkswagen Group's most important software architecture of the coming years. We're utilizing modern work processes and tools for close collaboration and higher speed," said Peter Bosch, CEO of Cariad.

If the name Cariad sounds familiar, especially in conjunction with the PPE architecture, it's probably for less than positive reasons. Delays at Cariad earlier in the decade have pushed back the production debuts of PPE models by entire years, and have also reportedly played no small role in the surprise departure of VW Group CEO Herbert Diess in June 2022.