SPY PICS: Audi's next flagship limo

The next big tech step for premium car-maker Audi will be this luxury flagship limousine, the next-generation A8, pictured here in the final phases of its development phase by spy photographers.

Due on sale next year, the new A8 will deliver Audi’s first genuine autonomous (or “piloted”, in Audi-speak) driving experience, with the car’s Traffic Jam Pilot able to drive the car itself in heavy traffic indefinitely at speeds below 60km/h.

It will be the start, Audi boss Rupert Stadler says, of the company's drive towards fully autonomous driving by 2025, and will be the first Audi to directly benefit from its joint-venture ownership of the HERE mapping system, which was bought in conjunction with Daimler and BMW from Nokia earlier this year.

The new A8 will also have access to fully electrified, petrol-electric hybrid and petrol and diesel powertrains, including the full powertrain of the cracking SQ7, with its twin-turbo 4.0-litre V8 diesel, complete with an electric compressor to eliminate turbo lag.

It will also be the precursor to Audi’s first fully electric car, due in 2018, followed by at least one new all-electric car every year after that.

However, the leap to both piloted and electrified powertrains is expected to cost Audi dearly in the short-term.

“We are currently in a phase of enormous advance expenditure for the mobility of tomorrow,” Audi’s Board Member for Finance and Organisation, Axel Strotbek, admitted to Audi’s annual shareholder conference last week.

Audi will launch 20 new models this year, at least 10 more next year and more again in 2018, as the tougher 2020 European emissions laws draw closer.

“Electrification and digitization represent an historic shift,” Audi’s CEO, Rupert Stadler, told the same conference last week.

“We will play a large part in shaping this change and will thus further enhance our strong position.

“Audi is preparing for production of its first fully electric large-series automobile. It will be launched in 2018 as a sporty SUV with a range of more than 500km and will be produced in Brussels.

“Starting in 2018, we will launch another electrified car each year,” Stadler said.

With the camouflage down to a minimum on this test car, the minimalist Marc Lichte-era design ideas will come to the fore.

Inspired by last year's 'prologue' concept car, it will usher in an era of thin A-pillars, a fast-back roofline, a narrow glasshouse and simpler body creasing than the current Q7 and A4, which were the last cars from the previous design team.

It will lend its exterior design language to the next A6 and A7, but was too late to be a big influence on the next A5, and Audi is taking its SUV range in a different direction.

The next A8 will be built on a low-riding version of the Q7’s MLB II architecture for front-engined, longitudinal driveline cars, meaning an end to the A8’s stand-alone space-frame aluminium architecture.

There was pressure to move the A8 onto the Porsche Panamera’s MSB architecture, but that has been resisted.