Audi CEO Gernot Döllner sat down with a roundtable of journalists this week and said, once again, that the brand is actively evaluating possibilities for a more rugged SUV. He has said versions of this before. The context he added this time was specifically about the United States. "The US is not one market," Döllner said. A model that works in California does not necessarily work in Nebraska. What works in Nebraska, he implied, is something considerably more capable in the dirt than anything Audi currently sells.
The idea has been circulating inside Audi since at least 2023, when former design chief Marc Lichte pointed out the obvious gap in the premium market. Only two luxury manufacturers build vehicles that genuinely deliver in serious terrain: Mercedes-Benz with the G-Class and Land Rover with the Defender. Both are enormously profitable. Both have waiting lists. Both occupy a price point and a cultural position that generates margins most carmakers would consider obscene. Audi, which sells Quattro as a core brand identity, does not have anything that competes with either of them. That is a gap that has bothered the people inside Ingolstadt for years.
The Q6 E-Tron terrain concept, shown last year, was the clearest signal yet that someone is drawing this vehicle rather than just discussing it. Concepts of that specificity do not appear by accident. They are product development in public, a way of measuring response before anything is approved for production.
What makes the current moment more concrete is the platform question. Edmunds reported in March that Audi is looking seriously at borrowing the architecture from Scout Motors, the revived American brand that Volkswagen launched to address exactly the kind of buyer Döllner described when he mentioned Nebraska. Scout's Traveler SUV uses a separate chassis with the body mounted on top, with more than 12 inches of ground clearance, fording depth approaching three feet and towing capacity around 7,000 pounds in its electric version. That is genuine specification. Starting pricing for the Scout Traveler is set below $60,000, which leaves considerable room above it for an Audi version to occupy without colliding with the G-Class at £164,000 or thereabouts.
Like this? Get the app: iOS | Android
Audi is not short of SUVs. It has the Q3, Q5, Q7, Q8 and the forthcoming Q9, which Döllner specifically mentioned this week as a model built for the US market. None of those vehicles are designed to go anywhere that would concern a Defender owner. An Audi built on a separate chassis, with locking differentials and the kind of approach angles that matter when the road runs out would be something entirely different from everything the four rings currently sell. Speculation has already settled on the name Q Extreme, though nothing has been confirmed.
Döllner also floated the possibility that rather than a single dedicated model, Audi might simply create rugged variants across existing SUV lines, as Honda has done with Trailsport and Subaru with Wilderness. That would be a cheaper and faster approach. It would also be significantly less interesting, and considerably less threatening to the vehicles it would nominally compete with.
"Evaluating" has a shelf life. The Q9 arrives later this year. If Döllner is still evaluating a rugged SUV when the Q9 is on forecourts and Nebraska is still asking the question, the evaluation will start to look like something else.
Sources
- Motor1 — Audi Says It's 'Evaluating' A Rugged Off-Road SUV (roundtable interview with Gernot Döllner, published 28 May 2026)
- Edmunds — Audi Wants to Build a Rugged SUV. It Might Look to Scout for Help
- CarBuzz — Audi Boss Hints At Rugged SUV, But Q9 Flagship Comes First
- Autoblog — Audi's Rugged New SUV Could Rival the G-Wagen and Defender
- Robb Report — Audi's Next SUV Could Be an Off-Roader Based on the Scout Traveler
- Off-Road.com — Audi Is Seriously Considering a Body-on-Frame Off-Road SUV