An Audi owner has sued the car brand on behalf of several others because he believes the Germans have made a car that is actually a ticking time bomb.
Audi has been sued in the US by a group of e-tron electric car owners, who claim the cars are "ticking bombs" due to a battery defect that can burst into flames.
The lawsuit comes in the wake of a series of accidents where e-tron models have caught fire, including an incident in December in Linköping, Sweden, where a family had to flee their burning car.
In the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Georgia, the owners claim that Audi is not taking the problem seriously enough.
The car owners' spokesman, Dwight Kelly, has been interviewed by Bloomberg Law .
– Unfortunately, the recalls do not address the cause of the defect, and Audi has not agreed to repair or replace all defective batteries.
Kelly also criticizes Audi's solution to the problem, which instructs car owners to only charge their cars up to 80 percent.
– This means that the car's capacity will be much less than what was promised at the time of purchase, says the lawsuit against the car brand.
Replacing all the batteries will cost Audi billions of kroner if it comes to that. However, the Germans are far from the only ones to have serious problems with burning electric cars. In the US, Jaguar has not only recalled but also bought back several thousand electric cars. Read more about it here.
The bomb is not only ticking in the US. Fires in both Sweden and Denmark show that the problem also exists in Europe.
However, it is not known whether the car that recently burned down in the Swedish city of Linköping was one of the recalled models.
A witness who saw the car burning later described the dramatic situation.
"It started to smoke, and they ran to the edge, then they barely managed to get out with their child, because the car was completely engulfed in flames."
The bomb case in the US could have implications for Audi owners in Europe. If the court rules in their favor, it could put pressure on Audi to take more responsibility for the problem globally.
The case is now in the hands of the federal court in Georgia. Here in Denmark, a brand new Audi Q4 e-tron burned a house in Hirtshals to the ground. It happened in the summer of 2023.
