The Audi Group has published its new Corporate Responsibility Report in which it reports transparently on its targets, activities and key figures in the five core areas of products, the environment, employees, society and finance. The new issue focuses on the future topics of alternative drive systems, digital connectivity and internationalization. In addition, three special online topics examine these megatrends with multimedia content and expert interviews.

Audi is pur­su­ing the vi­sion of CO2‑neu­tral mo­bil­ity with a wide range of ac­tions. They in­clude re­duc­ing the fuel con­sump­tion of its mod­els, launch­ing al­ter­na­tive drive sys­tems on the mar­ket and uti­liz­ing new en­ergy sources. The fo­cus is on elec­tric­ity and nat­ural gas as well as fuel cells pow­ered by hy­dro­gen. The com­pany is also re­search­ing into syn­thetic fu­els that do not re­quire bio­mass and con­tain nei­ther olefins nor aro­mat­ics. These new fu­els burn bet­ter and cleaner and there­fore pro­duce lower emis­sions. Audi and its re­search part­ner are do­ing pi­o­neer­ing work in this area. Syn­thetic Audi e‑diesel was pro­duced for the first time in March and the first batch of Audi e‑gaso­line was ready in May. Audi e‑gas has been avail­able since 2013.

Au­di’s ac­tiv­i­ties for more sus­tain­abil­ity are bear­ing fruit and are made trans­par­ent for the pub­lic, as ev­i­denced by the first place in the 2014 Sus­tain­abil­ity Im­age Score (SIS), a rank­ing pro­duced by the mar­ket-re­search and con­sult­ing com­pany Facit Re­search. Ger­man con­sumers voted the brand into the po­si­tion of most sus­tain­able com­pany. “This first place con­firms that we are on the right track. We are shap­ing in­di­vid­ual mo­bil­ity re­spon­si­bly and are mak­ing our­selves fit for the fu­ture,” stated Prof. Dr. Pe­ter F. Trop­schuh, Head of Cor­po­rate Re­spon­si­bil­ity at AUDI AG.

An­other area in which Audi is work­ing in­ten­sively is dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, which al­lows dri­ving to be made even more ef­fi­cient and even safer. This is why Audi is con­tin­u­ing with the fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of pi­loted dri­ving. As of 2017, the first stage of this tech­nol­ogy will be ap­plied as stan­dard equip­ment in the Audi A8. In this con­text, high pri­or­ity is placed on the se­cu­rity and pro­tec­tion of cus­tomer data.

To en­sure its long‑term fi­nan­cial suc­cess, Audi is pre­sent in all ma­jor sales mar­kets. In the sec­ond half of the year 2016, the com­pany will there­fore open a new pro­duc­tion plant in San José Chi­apa, Mex­ico, for the suc­ces­sor model of the Audi Q5. Audi is sup­port­ing the econ­omy in that re­gion with the de­vel­op­ment of a lo­cal sup­plier net­work. Audi is also ini­ti­at­ing nu­mer­ous sus­tain­abil­ity and en­vi­ron­men­tal ini­tia­tives in Mex­ico.

The brand with the Four Rings reg­u­larly car­ries out trend analy­ses on sus­tain­abil­ity as well as di­alogs with its stake­hold­ers in the fields of busi­ness and sci­ence and in NGOs. The Sus­tain­abil­ity Re­port fol­lows the G4 guide­lines of the Global Re­port­ing Ini­tia­tive (GRI). As an ac­tive mem­ber of the Global Com­pact of the United Na­tions, the Audi Group is com­mit­ted to ten prin­ci­ples in the ar­eas of hu­man rights, em­ploy­ment stan­dards, en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion and the pre­ven­tion of cor­rup­tion. The 2014 progress re­port is to be found in the Cor­po­rate Re­spon­si­bil­ity Re­port.

Au­di’s Cor­po­rate Re­spon­si­bil­ity Re­port and the spe­cial top­ics can be ac­cessed with im­me­di­ate ef­fect on­line in Ger­man at www.audi.de/cr-report and in Eng­lish at www.audi.com/cr-report. The key fig­ures, the cor­po­rate re­spon­si­bil­ity pro­gram and the progress re­port of the UN Global Com­pact will be up­dated in 2016. Audi will pub­lish its next full Cor­po­rate Re­spon­si­bil­ity Re­port in the first half of 2017.