Audi Brussels has built its last Q8 e-tron and closes today

On Tuesday, February 25th, the last Audi Q8 e-tron rolled off the line at Audi Brussels. Today, the factory closes its doors. Although the factory’s closure was announced a while ago, it symbolizes the upheaval in the car industry just a few days before the EU Commission’s action plan.

Rumors had already emerged at the beginning of 2024 that Audi could build the successor generation of the Q8 e-tron in Mexico in 2027. The shock for the employees came in July: “Due to the global decline in customer orders in the premium electric segment, production of the Q8 e-tron will not end in 2027 but earlier,” was the dry message of the Audi management.

As negotiations on alternatives or buyers came to nothing, Audi announced that February 2025 is the end. In protest against the closure and because the company and the workers’ unions could not agree on severance payments, the production lines in Brussels were shut down earlier.

Many had assumed that they would not even start up again. However, Audi restarted production, only to end for good a few weeks later.

76 years

The Brussels-Forest plant has been producing cars for 76 years. Today, the last car will be assembled in the halls, and the current owner, Audi, will close the plant. Three thousand jobs will be lost, and a social plan was hastily negotiated. After more than eight million cars were produced, the facility will close its doors.

In 2018, when Audi decided to move the production of its small A1 to a cheaper factory within the group, the Audi workforce in Brussels was geared toward the future. Audi Brussels would be the pilot factory for building EVs, and the production of the first fully electric Audi, the e-tron, was started.

This e-tron quattro, later renamed the Q8 e-tron, has been built there since 2018. Audi invested 600 million euros in it and made further changes in 2023 to prepare the plant for the overflow production of the Q4 e-tron built in Zwickau.

No future?

However, neither the sales figures for the Q8 e-tron nor the Q4 e-tron have developed as quickly as Audi had hoped. According to Audi, the plant in Brussels also had structural problems that drove up costs. Logistics and production were expensive because no press shop was on site, and body parts had to be transported there from other plants.

Expansion is impossible as residential areas border the site on one side and railway tracks on the other. Furthermore, the manufacturer frequently pointed out the high salary cost in Belgium but also lauded the personnel for their competence and productivity.

The Brussels plant was one of the most modern and green plants within the VW Group, but that doesn’t help when you only produce one model, and that model no longer sells. As sales weren’t reaching expectations in the group, especially for EVs, the management decided to reshuffle, which was awful news for the Brussels plant.

Audi declared that it moved heaven and earth to find other plant occupations, but the unions and some analysts doubt this. In the end, when a German manufacturer has to choose which factory to close, the last thing he does is cut the workforce in his own country, whatever rational reasons there might be.

Other manufacturers, mainly Chinese, expressed interest in eventually taking over the plant, but it has never been clear if Audi was so eager to sell to competitors.

European car industry in turmoil

In a way, the Brussels plant symbolizes the state of the European car industry. Traditional car manufacturing made European manufacturers big, world-famous, complacent, and sometimes arrogant.

Electric cars are the future, and the pace of development is enormous. Europe missed the train. Challengers, mainly Chinese and Tesla, are building pressure with lean structures and new methods. The transformation is inevitable; the exact pace is the decisive factor.

A few days after car production ends in Brussels, the EU Commission will present its action plan to make the European car industry fit for the future. It was too late for a plant that was one of the exemplary plants within the VW Group and the whole industry. Three thousand people have to look for another job. Maybe it will be in the defense industry…