Audi showed off the production version of the 2022 Q4 E-Tron, a city-friendly EV with Q7-like interior space, earlier this month. Working at a neck-snapping pace, the firm has now launched production of the model in Zwickau, Germany.
Located relatively close to the border between Germany and the Czech Republic, Zwickau is a historically important city for Audi, and for Germany’s entire car industry. It’s where August Horch (1868-1951) founded Audi in 1909, and where he built the company’s first car in 1910. Zwickau was part of East Germany between 1949 and 1990, so communist government officials took advantage of their access to a workforce familiar with car-building to establish the factory that made Trabant models for several decades. Volkswagen has built cars in Zwickau since Germany’s reunification.
The facility manufactured its last piston-powered car (a Golf Variant) in 2020, and it has been churning out electric cars since, including the ID.3 and the ID.4. The Q4 E-Tron is the first Audi model on its roster. Building it there makes sense, because the crossover rides on the same basic MEB architecture as the aforementioned ID models.