Audi publishes new Corporate Responsibility Report

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 atwww.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.