SEPARATED AT BIRTH

Audi Sport is pioneering innovative production processes that let it build very different cars side by side. Rachel Burgess finds out more

-  Rachel Burgess

What do the Audi R8 and Audi E-tron GT have in common? Not much. Different powertrain, different chassis, different bodystyle. Not a single part is shared. And yet there's one major commonality, as you will probably have guessed by the image here: they are both built on the same production line at Audi Sport's Böllinger Höfe plant in Neckarsulm, Germany.

It's a feat of manufacturing that's not to be underestimated: it's the only example across the entire Volkswagen Group where two models with no commonalities are built on the same line.

It's an unusual scenario. The R8 is predominantly hand-made and V10-powered, while the E-tron GT is fully electric and reflects a new world of automation and digitalisation. So why produce them together?

Böllinger Höfe was opened in 2014 and became home to the first and then the second-generation R8, and it had always been planned as a flexible small-scale plant, explains production director Wolfgang Schanz: "It was a good chance for us to show the potential, flexible structure of this production site. Because the R8 volume was quite low, we had capacity."

Still, it's some shift: before the E-tron GT came along last year, the site was hand-making 10 R8s a day. The total number of cars is now around 60, when you factor in the E-tron GTs made on the highly automated line. 

THE AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES OF NOW

Programmed autonomous guided vehicles know the layout of the facility and carry the cars around at various steps, following no specific floor line. The 23 AGVs take six minutes to charge at a wireless station and last about four hours, but there's never any downtime; they rotate as they go to keep production flowing. Schanz said they weren't very reliable when Audi started using them in 2014 but they now boast 99.5% reliability.