It might be working on battery-electric and plug-in hybrid cars for the future, but Audi is not throwing all of its eggs into one basket.
Audi's development director, Prof. Dr. Ulrich Hackenberg, announced today that it has bought a raft of fuel-cell technology patents from Canadian clean energy company, Ballard Power Systems.
Ballard's share price jumped more than 50 per cent on news of the deal, which Dr Hackenberg insists will allow fuel-cell research and production engineering on all Volkswagen Group brands and models.
"Audi is acquiring these strategically important patents for the entire Group and will make them available to all the brands," Dr. Hackenberg said.
"In this way, we are securing crucial expertise that will provide new impetus for the further development of this technology."
The timing comes after the Volkswagen Group received a lot of positive press for the fuel-cell prototypes (the Golf SportWagen HyMotion, the Passat HyMotion, the Audi A7 Sportback h-tron Quattro pictured) it offered for media testing at last November's Los Angeles motor show.
Extending the cooperation with Ballard until 2019 (a year before Europe's tough 95-gram corporate average CO2 emissions laws kick in) will cost Audi US$80 million. Around US$50 million of that covers all of Ballard's automotive fuel-cell patents (some of which Ballard itself bought from United Technologies Corp), while another US$30 million is for an engineering services contract for next-generation fuel stacks.
Ballard will retain the rights to its patents for buses and non-automotive use and has had an engineering contract with the Volkswagen Group since 2012.