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Feann Torr24 Nov 2014
NEWS

Audi wants virtual reality showroom

Colossal Melbourne Audi dealership pioneers Sport showroom concept and pushes new digital sales direction

The second largest Audi dealership in the world has just opened its doors in uptown Melbourne, a $25 million Zagame-owned facility that represents a shift towards a bold new sales strategy for the brand.

As well as pioneering the Audi Sport showroom concept, an entire floor dedicated to RS and R8 vehicles located on the third level of the huge dealership, second only in size to Dubai's terminal opened two years prior, the Audi Centre Melbourne also features a customer private lounge, or CPL.

Audi Australia's Managing Director, Andrew Doyle, stated that the CPL lays the foundations for a new high-tech direction sales strategy.

"We'll see the first step of a new era in Melbourne, the first step into digital, if you like," he said, but cautioned that "direct distribution" or online sales, a la the Subaru BRZ, were not part of the plan.

"What we do see however is that 60 models can't even fit into a dealership, even the beautiful Melbourne Audi centre. We will open a CPL, a customer private lounge, where you can build a car with a full screen power wall. And it has I think 6 million combinations or versions of car possible.

"This is the first step to digitisation. Some might say it’s a glorified configurator, but it's high quality CAD files of our cars. It's the best quality one can get," said Doyle.

The power wall has been seen before (at the massive Dubai dealership), and the Melbourne version comprises a huge wall screen synced with a large in-table touchscreen. The idea is to allow customers to create incredibly accurate virtual versions of their ideal vehicle via intuitive graphical interface. But the power wall and CPL is only the start. Doyle says the company is targeting 20,000-plus sales in Australia for 2015 and in order to keep the company's sales growth strong it will be crucial to reach more customers.

Mega dealerships like Audi Centre Melbourne is one way to do this but compact Audi centres equipped with high definition visualisation gear is another.

"Other ideas we have, which we saw recently, is [virtual reality] goggles, allowing customers to step inside the car, literally. I experienced it myself. It's really cool," enthused the Audi Australia boss.

"With Bang and Olufsen sound you can hear the car door thud shut, you can turn around inside the car viewing it in high definition. It's the next step."
He posited that smaller 'satellite' dealerships could house a handful a vehicles but allow customers to experience the full Audi range thanks to advances in virtual reality technology.

"There'll always be a place for a dealer network, but we can see sales satellites and service satellites with our partners. We can potentially see more smaller locations with our existing partners, then the influx of digital technology to make that experience seamless."

Doyle also noted that Audi needed to respond to customer's changing lifestyles: "We also want to connect more with the customer outside the bricks and mortar".

"We see ourselves as a conduit between customer and dealer. We see 24 hour assist. People don’t go with a newspaper under their arm looking for cars on Saturday morning, they do it at two or three in the morning. So we should be able to answer their questions at two or three in the morning," he stated.

With annual growth more than 20 per cent thus far in 2014, Audi is aggressively investing in advanced infrastructure and technology in a bid to maintain its strong growth.

Indeed, Australia is an increasingly important international market for the German prestige car maker, having leapfrogged South Africa to become the brand's 13th biggest global market, up from 18th just a year prior.

Audi will continue its successful new model assault through 2015, with mid-term plans towards decade's end to expand the Audi range from 45 models to around 60, with a number of brand new SUVs expected to lead the charge. Audi recently stated that the Q8 will be on sale by 2017 along with several other 'Q' models by 2020, including the Q1, Q2, Q4 and Q6.

Although Audi's year-to-date sales still lag behind BMW and Mercedes-Benz in this country, according to VFACTS Audi new car sales in Australia are up 20.4 per cent year on year to the end of October, 2014, the strongest growth of the three German brands.

This time last year Audi had 13,305 sales, and is now on 16,014.

The brand's highest-selling model is the Audi A3, with sales of 3702 thus far in 2014 representing an increase of more than 120 per cent on last year's 1673 units. The German prestige brand's second-best selling model is the Q5, an SUV that found 2807 homes for the same period.

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