Audi Partners With China’s Tongji University For EV Development

Electric vehicle development is quickly proving to be a worldwide effort, with companies and research institutes from across the globe and in varying industries and fields forming partnerships and alliances in order to accelerate the roll out of zero-emission electric vehicles.

The latest partnership is one between Audi and China’s renowned Tongji University, which will center on the research, instruction and services dealing with electromobility.

A new research department is being established at the university’s main Shanghai campus where students will work together with the automaker on various technical projects as part of their coursework for a bachelor’s or master’s degree or doctorate. The first project for the “Audi Tongji Joint Labs” is the joint development of an Audi A6L as an electric vehicle.

Audi’s first production electric vehicle will be a high-end sports car model based on the R8 chassis and due for release late next year. It is being designed and engineered within Audi’s new e-tron division, which has been established solely for the development of future electric and hybrid vehicles.

Currently, the e-tron division has about 100 employees and is headed by Franciscus van Meel, Audi’s senior vice president of vehicle electrification, at the automaker’s headquarters in Ingolstadt, Germany. However, with partnerships like this latest one with Tongji University, we could soon see new electric vehicles from Audi being developed in research centers all over the globe.

[Audi]