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In one of the 2020s’ less likely retro revivals, the Audi A2 is back.

The A2 has become a bit of cult classic, because it was such an uncompromising piece of engineering, using an aluminium spaceframe and radical aerodynamics to create an incredibly spacious and fuel-efficient small hatchback. But unlike the Mini and the Renault 5, it wasn’t all that popular when it was new and didn’t make its manufacturer any money.

Audi has come to the retro wave from a different angle, because it didn’t actually set out to create something that deliberately riffed on the past. The idea was to make an EV smaller than the Q4 E-tron and make it as aerodynamic as possible, so it would go farther with a relatively small battery – and it turned out that if you optimise a hatchback shape for aerodynamics, something A2-shaped is the logical conclusion.

A fairly short, bluff front end that flows into an monolithic body makes sense because it doesn’t force the air to change direction any more than necessary, as does a teardrop shape that’s cut off at the end for practicality. Try to maximise rear visibility and you end up with a split rear window.

No, the new A2 E-tron isn’t as radically innovative as the all-aluminium original. It can’t be, because making interesting but unprofitable cars isn’t a great business strategy. It also needs to be relatively affordable and indirectly replace the recently departed A1 and Q2. As a result, it’s based on more mass-market underpinnings, namely the familiar Volkswagen Group MEB platform, albeit the latest version thereof.

This comes with a raft of upgrades over previous cars, chief among which is that the middle battery option now uses lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) instead of nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) chemistry, so it’s happy to be charged to 100% all the time.

The other big thing is the new ‘APP350’ electric motor, which is even more efficient, thanks to thinner materials, thinner oil and a separate oil pan, so the gears don’t constantly splash through a bath of oil, causing drag.

The A2 E-tron, then, is effectively Ingolstadt’s take on the Volkswagen ID 3. Audi isn’t releasing dimensions yet, but it’s clear the A2 is a similar size to that car. Since BMW and Mercedes-Benz have yet to come up with an electric 1 Series or A-Class, that puts the A2 up against premium-ish rivals such as the Renault Megane, Volvo EX30 and Mini Countryman E, as well as its other sibling, the Cupra Born.

Under the camouflage

So it will need to feel a little bit posh inside. You can’t see much of the interior yet, but I had a decent peek under the camouflage sheets, revealing that the A2 shares a lot more with other recent Audis than with the ID 3. Think Q3 for the digital screens, steering wheel and 1980s-Citroën-style column stalk array.

Mostly that’s good news, because it all works intuitively and feels pretty solid and robust, but it’s still a far cry from the wonderfully tactile Audi interiors of old. There are very few physical controls, and the thick bezels on the screens remind me of a first-generation iPad.

On the door tops and the dash, Audi has gone big on the sort of knitted-looking fabric that we’ve also seen in recent Minis, which feels pleasant enough. It’s all very black and rather austere, which suits an Audi, I suppose, but I’m not sure it feels any more upmarket than a Megane.

The manually adjustable cloth seats are superb, though, and the driving position is spot on – not super-low, because the A2 was never like that, but hatchbacky enough.

In the rear there’s generous head room and okay knee room, albeit with quite a high floor, so the seating position isn’t very comfy.

We don’t have a boot space figure yet, but there’s no reason to believe that it would be any smaller than the Born’s 385 litres.

So how efficient is it, really?

Our first taster of the A2 came in the form of an ‘efficiency drive’ on a loop around Denmark and southern Sweden in the most efficient version of the car, with the new motor and 58kWh LFP battery (there will most likely be 52kWh and 79kWh NMC versions as well) and on sport suspension, because that lowers the car for less wind resistance.

It wasn’t the most exciting drive of my life, truth be told. There’s a reason Porsche GT3s flock to Nürburg and not Trelleborg, but it did suit the A2, because it duly returned 5.4mpkWh.

That’s not to say this was an unrealistic route: it included some motorways and A-roads. So that’s a hugely impressive result. It means you could squeeze 300 miles out of this 58kWh battery, which would be beyond any of its rivals. Even with a bit more spirited driving, I suspect an efficiency figure in the high fours should be doable.

You get all the tools you need for efficient driving. The brake and accelerator pedals are smooth and progressive, and between the steering wheel paddles and the drive selector you can have full freewheeling, one-pedal driving and everything in between. There’s something for everyone here.

On the chassis side, you do clearly notice some compromises in order to get that efficiency – at least in the spec of this test car.

When the A2 comes to the UK later this year, I’d avoid the sport suspension at all costs, because whatever efficiency benefits it brings isn’t worth suffering a bone-shaking ride.

Even on the near-perfectly kept roads of southern Sweden, the A2 was incredibly stiff. It felt well controlled and not brittle, but it got tiresome very quickly.

There was also a fair bit of road noise from the Bridgestone Turanza 6 tyres.

I’d be curious to see how those would hold up in the wet, as we’ve road tested a couple of EVs (Mercedes-Benz CLA Electric, Toyota C-HR+) with Turanza 6s that really underperformed in wet braking during the road test. The tyres on the A2 are Audi-specific, though, so might do better.

On the day, the roads were dry, and the A2 had reasonable grip and steering that was nicely measured and free from corruption, thanks to the motor being at the back.

Verdict

The purists will bemoan that the new A2 isn’t the rolling science experiment that the original was, but such a thing was never going to get the green light. The question is whether Audi has done enough to make this its own car.

It’s a bit of a shame that Audi can’t make something more bespoke, like Mercedes did with the CLA, but the A2 is more than just an ID 3 clone.

We will need to spend more time in it on more varied roads and try different versions for a full verdict but, based on this slightly limited drive, the new A2 is recognisably Audi in its style, feel and focus on aero, and its efficiency is very impressive. It stands to reason that this EV will probably be more successful than the ICE original, although I doubt it will have as loyal of a following in 20 years.

Audi A2 E-tron 58kWh

Interesting design and aerodynamics and a plusher interior combine for a promising premium take on the VW ID 3

There's a simple but crucial secret behind how the Chinese brands have managed to develop cars so quickly at costs much lower than those faced by manufacturers in Europe, but it also runs counter to the way traditional car makers work: they share parts.

The ability to use standard parts across multiple models isn't new, and it is one the big reasons why global car giants such as the Volkswagen Group and Stellantis have grown to the size they are. The more you build (or source) of a single part, the cheaper it becomes. 

But China has gone one step further by breaking two unwritten rules: the first is that parts should be built to the car makers’ exact specifications; the second is that to stand out among competitors, parts should be differentiated. 

China has proven it’s possible to break those rules and still produce cars that appeal to customers, partly by using the costs saved to increase standard tech. Now other countries, including Japan, are looking at whether they can replicate that across competing brands as they scramble to match China on cost.  

“China has this industrial scale,” Ned Curic, head of development at Stellantis, told Autocar. “Look at door handles. In China, there are three different handles. Everybody has the same.”

New models from China look fairly similar, and while copying successful designs has been a feature in the country’s recent past, there’s a more practical reason. “Proportion wise, they're very similar, and why they're similar is because they use the same suppliers for the tooling,” Curic said.

Tooling is the industrial kit needed to make parts, including stamping dies and moulding presses. These are typically unique to each manufacturer because traditionally they want full control of all aspects of the car’s design.

This, however, is costly and takes a lot time, which in turn adds more cost. “That's a long lead for us, six months or so, because we do a lot of customisation on those,” Curic said. "In China, they do it close on four weeks because they use the same tools."

Stellantis learnt from Chinese and is now standardising a lot more inside in the company, Curic said, citing its own narrow range of three types of door handle.

Ford is another to spot the industrial scale. ”They’ve got this hyper level of commoditisation of parts that customers don't always see, touch or feel,” Jim Baumbick, head of Ford in Europe, told the Automotive News Europe Congress in June. He cited headlights as an example: “If you develop a new headlamp, completely new, it's three months longer than just taking a combination of parts that are modular, designed and ubiquitous in the industry. We need to do the same in a different way, here in Europe.”

The strategy allowed the growth of new brands. “That's what people didn't understand,” Philippe Houchois, head of automotive analysis at the bank Jefferies, told Autocar. "They thought all those small car brands that could not survive, but in fact the back office of a small car maker in China can be more scaled up than you realise. Because they used, say springs, that were standard across the industry, used by BYD, Geely as well as everybody else.”

The omnipresent 1.5-litre engine, originally licenced from Mitsubishi, is another good example.

China’s standardisation is in part state-led. Government mandated standards are nothing new and are vital to ensure everyone is working to the same safety, emissions and security legislation. Car makers often welcome them, particularly when they cross borders, because it reduces their engineering bill.

But China went one step further via industrial regulators Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and its research body the China Automotive Technology and Research Center (CATARC).

The MIIT’s 14th five-year plan, running to the end of 2025, was focused on setting out standards to allow ‘new energy’ car makers (ie those focusing on EVs and plug-in hybrids) to scale up.

The plan laid 647 automotive standards for the industry, of which 54 were mandatory and 335 were recommended national standards with the rest sector standards.

However the state was able to steer the industry down a particular path by tying some of the recommended ones to subsidies. 

The price of not following them was too costly. “That made them kind of mandatory,” Xuming Zhang, head of the World New Energy Vehicle Development Organisation (WNEVDO), told Autocar. WNEVDO is non-profit co-founded by the China Society of Automotive Engineers and global engineer standards promotion body Fisita, with the shared goal to increase global cooperation on automotive regulation.

China’s move was sensible, Zhang states, giving the example of charge sockets. “Suppliers don't want to have to make one for company A, another for company B,” Zhang said. "That’s not good for the product, the development or for their manufacturing. They cannot reach their scale of economy."

Battery cells is another area where recommended government standards turned defacto mandatory via the subsidies, Zhang said.

“China has a strong government, as you know,” he added. "Sometime it regulates, sometimes it support the industry. It may not benefit a single company, but it will benefit the industry."

Houchois at Jefferies believed Tesla was used to provide a role model here. “My theory is that the Chinese brought in Tesla, rolled out a red carpet so it could built a plant [in Shanghai] very, very quickly so it could be used to instil a sense of pressure on the Chinese carmakers,” he said. “Some of the standardisation came because they kind of duplicated Tesla for a while, which is why so many Chinese cars look like Teslas.”

The traditional method of car making, where parts are only shared within groups, is changing. Former Toyota boss and the new head of Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association Koji Sato has openly called for parts standardisation among Japanese car makers. He cited wire harnesses as an example that could boost productivity tenfold, he told Automotive News in an interview. Nissan CEO Ivan Espinosa has called for a similar approach.

Even premium car makers are starting to take notice, including BMW.  CEO Milan Nedeljkovic told investors late July that cost reduction will partly come from “increasing the speed of development through further standardization and commonality in engineering solutions and components.” Nedeljkovic was quick to assure that BMW would keen an iron grip on specifications, while also acknowledging suppliers could be leaned on for standard parts. “We have to realize that the supplier offer has increased over time,” he said. “There are industrial standards on the market, which are convincing, and it would be wrong not to use them.”

There are issues with this approach. It worked in China because it “turns out that the customers didn’t care much about the style”, Stellantis’ Curic said. Instead customers focused more on digital experiences, which could be differentiated.

That’s different in Europe. “In Europe and in North America, people still care a lot about style. The fit and finish, the materials, the look and feel. I think they make purchase decisions on that,” Curic said. Sharing parts tooling for visible features could be risky.

That is become more the case in China, where car makers are being forced by the pace of competition to find more differentiating features. “The next generation of cars will be less lookalike, I think,” Houchois said.

Enforced parts standardisation is not universally loved in China, WNEVDO’s Zhang said: “Suppliers want common parts because it makes their business easy. The car makers, when they think about their creation, their competency, are sometimes not so keen.”. He cited the desire for car makers to move from standard cell design to be able incorporate cells directly into the car body, rather than a separate pack.

The next MIIT five-year plan, the 15th, announced earlier this year, has gone a different route, marking a “decisive shift from scaling standards volume to targeting strategic technology gaps, tightening safety baselines, and deepening China’s international standardization role”, according to analysis from SESEC, a body that promotes European automotive standardization interests in China.

Essentially, as is often the case with Chinese five-year plans, the last one worked too well, leading to overcapacity, ferocious competition and declining car maker profits. Now MIIT is looking to regulate the digital side further as that becomes the new battleground.

It remains to be seen whether European car makers could actually bring themselves to share common parts, something that in the past was more associated with very small car brands who didn’t have the wherewithal to build its own switches, light units and the rest. Morris Marina doorhandles popping up on Lotuses, TVRs etc is probably the most famous example.

A move to widespread parts-sharing could even trigger claims of collusion in Europe, Houchois suggested.

However, in a period when Chinese car makers are gaining share all the time in Europe, rising close to 10% in the first half of the year, any means to reduce costs to their level will be on the table. 

“Massive global corporations need to evolve to sustain efficiency in a market that's shifting fast and forever,” Chris Mason, head of Fisita, told Autocar. “An efficiency in parts supply could help. Whether that's a golden bullet or not needs further consideration.”