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TURNING POINT

Vito Paladino, the first head of Audi Canada from this country, on driving toward electrification

/Interview by Alex Mlynek

Vito Paladino took over Audi Canada in the midst of the pandemic—and the automaker’s push toward electrification

Canada is home. I love it here. So when I was promoted to president last September, I didn’t need the ceremonial tour. I have a lot of operational experience, and I knew the team before I became the leader of it, so we hit the ground running fast. Priority one was ensuring workers’ safety, stabilizing the business and making sure the current operation was healthy. But we’ve also been keeping our eye on the future, because we’re here to make an impact. It’s so easy to think, Okay, we’re going to pull back on this. But on some of our strategic projects, maybe our greatest progress has happened in this pandemic period.

We’re in such a pivot period in automotive. It’s becoming a different type of mobility industry, and it’s becoming digitalized. A lot of the conversation has focused on electrification, and we will have five battery electric vehicles on the market by the end of the year, including two new SUVs. We were one of the first organizations to commit to the Paris climate agreement—we’re committed to getting our vehicle-specific CO2 emissions down globally by 30% by 2025. We want our operations to be carbon neutral by 2050. Audi has invested significant dollars—around € 17 billion of our € 35 billion investment budget up to 2025—on future technologies. So what does that mean for Canada? We’re assessing our CO2 footprint and looking at logistics, at our facilities and our operations on the retail side. On the electrification side, there are definitely things that need to happen—in the business community, in government and in society—to accelerate that. The first part is on the consumer side. We’re making sure consumers are comfortable with what an electrified mobility lifestyle would look and feel like, and giving them choices comparable to every internal-combustion engine vehicle. Building infrastructure is important too. How can we all work together, government and manufacturers, to make that investment? We’re investing with Electrify Canada, part of the Volkswagen Group, to add charging stations across the country. By the end of 2021, it’ll be over 30, and then the big push will be to get to 100 stations. So we’re really committed to not just the technology and becoming this electrified automotive company, but trying to live this progress and this kind of sustainability approach that every company and every person needs to take seriously.

But it goes beyond electric vehicles. Technology will unlock a lot of things. As autonomous driving becomes more of a proven technology—and we’re not talking about the next few years—it will improve safety, so there will be fewer accidents. Cars will become a comfortable place where you do a lot of your work and leisure as you get from one destination to the other. This is what Audi is doing—we’re looking at how our interiors can become more of a premium living area.

“Maybe our greatest progress has happened during this pandemic period”

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2021-05-29T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-05-29T07:00:00.0000000Z

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