Audi CEO Gernot Dollner announced last Saturday that the company plans to open a new factory in Georgia, its first manufacturing facility in America. That plant is set to eventually build 200,000 Q7s, Q8s, and Q9s annually—serious volume for some of Audi’s highest-margin products. That is huge news for the business, but an accompanying detail shared by a U.S. official around the time of the event suggests something that could end up being an even bigger deal for Audi’s lineup of offerings. At least, for off-road enthusiasts.
According to a Reuters report, a U.S. official says that Audi is also planning to build 25,000 vehicles of some sort a year at the new Scout Motors plant in South Carolina. Given that this facility is being built out solely to build the Scout brand’s body-on-frame SUV and truck offerings, this suggests that Audi, too, could be building something more truck-like very soon. And given that the company has also been teasing off-road additions to its lineup since it revealed a Q6 concept equipped with portal axles back in January of 2025, the move would make plenty of sense.
This production plan is in line with a German report from November of last year, which suggested that Audi was planning to build a body-on-frame product at the Scout factory at some point. By utilizing this new platform, Audi could rival the ultra-successful Mercedes-Benz G-Wagen and Land Rover Defender lines with a luxury SUV built from the ground up around off-road capability.
By utilizing existing factory space that would otherwise be used on Scout’s range of electrified off-roaders, Audi could take advantage of existing infrastructure. Perhaps even more importantly, building the trucks in the U.S. would allow Audi to dodge many of President Donald Trump’s heavy tariffs on imported cars, and sell the SUVs at a significantly higher profit margin in an American market with a well-established appetite for go-anywhere luxury SUVs.
Fred Smith's love of cars comes from his fascination with auto racing. Unfortunately, that passion led him to daily drive a high-mileage, first-year Porsche Panamera. He is still thinking about the last lap of the 2011 Indianapolis 500.
