In its frenetic search for a U.S. location for its first assembly plant, Audi CEO Gernot Döllner has finally decided and, at the same time, found himself in a political hornet’s nest by appearing at a Trump rally to cheer for the U.S. President.

Isabel Cademartori, a transport policy expert for Germany’s Social Democrats (SPD), condemned Gernot Döllner’s appearance at the rally on Saturday in Perry, Georgia, where he joined Trump on stage and thanked him for his support.

Cademartori accused Döllner of lending campaign support to an “autocrat who is waging a trade war against Germany”, calling his appearance shameful given the Nazi-era origins of Audi’s parent company, Volkswagen. “This is a disgrace, particularly in view of the history of the VW Group,” she said in Berlin.

The German Minister for Environment, Carsten Schneider, has also reacted more generally. “Apart from the fact that the way of announcing the plans was completely inappropriate, we have to doubt the future-orientedness of the decision,” said the politician in the German newspaper Köllner Stadt-Anzeiger.

“While an important part of the world is preparing the electric transition, Audi is still betting on fossil fuels, and that’s like betting on a dead horse,” he added.

A YouGov survey of 2,725 German citizens on Monday also shows that a large majority don’t appreciate Döllner’s presence at the rally: 39% of them find it ‘highly inappropriate’ and 18% ‘rather inappropriate’. Only 7% think it was ‘fully appropriate’ and 11% ‘rather appropriate’. 25% of respondents didn’t want to give their opinion.

Against the rules

Döllner’s appearance at a political rally is clearly inappropriate and against company rules. It also raised questions about Audi’s own political neutrality guidelines, which state that employees should avoid public appearances with political parties or candidates in the three months before elections.

As widely known, Trump’s Republican Party faces crucial congressional midterm elections on November 3, with its narrow majorities in both chambers of Congress at stake.

Audi plant in the U.S.

Audi began searching for a U.S. assembly plant roughly three years ago, before President Donald Trump’s second term and his import tariffs upended Volkswagen Group’s global manufacturing strategy and profitability.

But it appears burdensome U.S. tariffs accelerated the decision to invest in a plant. Audi imports each vehicle it sells in the U.S. and said its U.S. duties tallied €1.25 billion in 2025. The plant would give Audi a U.S. production base, as tariff costs, currency swings, and a double-digit sales decline in 2025 hurt its position in a market where rivals, such as BMW and Mercedes, build locally.

While Audi investigated localizing output at Volkswagen Group’s Chattanooga plant and a Scout Motors factory under construction in Blythewood, South Carolina, the luxury automaker decided it needed a greenfield site, following in the footsteps of rivals BMW and Mercedes-Benz, Döllner told journalists.

“It’s a business decision, and it is designed for decades,” Döllner said. “We build where our customers are. Our competitors have been doing this for years.” Audi said construction on the plant will begin in 2027, and it will invest around €3.6 billion in the project. The facility will create 4,500 jobs and will have a capacity of 200,000 cars per year. Output will begin in the early 2030s. Meanwhile, Audi also plans to produce another 25,000 vehicles per year at the aforementioned Scout plant.

Döllner said the plant will make Audi more competitive in the U.S. Currently, the brand imports every vehicle from Mexico or Europe. Overall, the U.S. tariffs cost VW Group some € 3.6 billion in 2025.

It remains unclear whether VW Group or Audi will receive any tariff relief from the investment. Audi’s U.S. sales fell 15% in the third quarter compared with the same period last year. Its U.S. sales fell 16% in 2025 to 164,942.

Döllner confirmed the new plant will build three (big) SUVs: the Q7, Q8 and Q9. The Q9, Audi’s largest vehicle ever, is a new model, and the Q7 was redesigned for the 2027 model year. Production in Georgia will likely start with the first midcycle updates for those nameplates.

The Audi Q5 will continue to be built in Mexico, and Q3 output will remain in Hungary during the first phase of the Georgia project, Döllner said.

To be confirmed

VW Group’s supervisory board, including labor representatives, has not yet approved the project. VW’s works council said Oct. 25 that there are several open questions yet to be answered internally through relevant committees.

“Over the next six to eight weeks, we will have internal committees to be involved in this decision and we are aiming for having the decision made before the end of the year,” Döllner said. He added that the plan to invest in a U.S. factory is not a vote against Germany, where the status of several VW Group plants remains in question as part of a wide-ranging restructuring plan that includes deep cost and job cuts.

Audi’s Neckarsulm plant in southwest Germany is one of the factories that could close after 2030. “Germany remains the backbone of Audi,” Döllner said. “We develop our cars here. Our technologies are created here. Georgia does not take any task away from us in Germany. We want to make Audi stronger in America and, with that, Audi as a whole.”

Audi has already closed its Brussels factory, and the successor to the car built there was meant to be assembled at Audi’s San José Chiapa factory near Puebla, Mexico. They won’t be happy there, either.

Powerful worker representatives, who make up half of the VW Group’s Supervisory Board, signaled they may demand concessions to greenlight the factory during difficult labor, wage, and investment talks in Germany. “Additional production in a new location always has to complement and benefit existing sites in the global production network,” VW’s works council said on Oct. 25. The IG Metall Union pointed out that Audi has become “a pawn in American elections”.

The German business newspaper Handelsblatt was even less friendly: “Döllner has let himself be humiliated and blackmailed by appearing at Trump’s political rally, a rally where hatred, racism and misogyny were rampant. The Audi CEO has crossed a line, apparently promising money and other extras is sufficient to make people forget fundamental values.”

Kneel before the bully

Since Trump returned to power for a second term, many politicians and business tycoons have knelt before the bully in the White House, confirming their vulnerability. Of course, it has accelerated Trump’s eagerness to humiliate them. The IT oligarchs were also pushing themselves around at Trump’s inauguration party, and the car company CEOs practically fell over each other to please him.

That may be kind of logical for the CEOs of the American manufacturers like GM, Ford, and (partly) Stellantis, but also foreign car CEOs like Akio Toyoda, Chairman of the world’s biggest car company, Toyota, prostituted himself almost immediately by wearing a Trump/Vance rally T-shirt at a racing event in Japan.

Now, it’s the turn of the world’s second-largest car manufacturer, the European VW Group, to show that it has no backbone whatsoever. Döllner has disgraced himself, his company, and his country, Germany.

Battery worries initiate a recall

Meanwhile, the recall campaign for Volkswagen Group’s electric cars over potentially defective battery cells is now also expanding to Audi, especially in the USA. Around 9,000 units of the Q4 e-tron and Q4 Sportback e-tron are now being recalled in the United States. However, nearly 3,700 units are also affected in other markets.

Audi has decided to initiate a “voluntary safety recall”, ordering exactly 9,048 electric vehicles in the US to return to workshops. These vehicles are equipped with a specific batch of battery cells from Hungary. Although no incidents have been reported, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) says battery fires cannot be ruled out. Affected vehicles should therefore be charged to no more than 80% for the time being.

It was initially unclear whether a recall for Audi electric vehicles was also pending in Europe. However, the NHTSA states that “a large portion” of the affected Audi Q4 e-tron vehicles with potential issues were produced for the North American market. But, on Wednesday, October 28, the Federal Motor Transport Authority in Germany (Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt) updated its recall database and now lists 12,734 affected Audi electric vehicles worldwide (manufactured between November 30, 2023, and June 26, 2025), including a single vehicle in Germany.

Subtracting the roughly 9,000 U.S. electric cars leaves just under 3,700 Q4 e-tron vehicles in other markets that are affected by the battery issue. However, the KBA does not specify where these cars were registered. Thus, it is impossible to say how many European owners are affected.

One thing is clear: Audi’s initiative is closely linked to Volkswagen’s major recall. The German automotive giant began examining its vehicles more closely in September after it had identified internal battery issues. These irregularities culminated in a recall of several VW ID. model series worldwide a week ago. Due to faulty EV batteries, nearly 72,700 electric vehicles must return to workshops. In Germany alone, 10,000 vehicles are reportedly affected.