Beijing 2016: Audi Connected Mobility concept — is that it?

We were excited to hear Audi was showing a mobility concept to the Beijing motorshow. But this quickly turned to disappointment when we witnessed what, to all intents and purposes, is a skateboard stowed in the pop-out drawer in the underside of a Q3.

This 1050mm-long longboard, with a pop-up handlebar arrangement to turn it into a scooter, is electrically powered (you attach a remote control which acts as a throttle), it’s got an 11km range. It can be controlled remotely in order to ferry its owner, or follow them along in order to carry luggage or shopping.

An electric scooter that pops out of a dedicated on-car storage unit to ride into the city and beat chronic traffic congestion might be a reasonable idea, yet this concept seems almost lazily obvious – it doesn’t show new thinking. We’ve seen other OEMs demonstrate on-board mobility extenders before –remember the Opel Flextreme with twin on-board Segways from 2008? And it smacks of an old-school way of thinking, where the car is still the primary mobility device people will actually buy and use. So as a holistic concept, Audi’s hardly tackling the chronic traffic issues the car creates in places like Beijing — it seems more like a cynical way to sell more cars. And the board/scooter itself doesn’t appear shot through with the loving attention to detail we’ve come to expect from Audi — it looks heavy, clunky and rushed.

Come on Audi, your brand’s strength and technical leadership provide the opportunity to really push forward thinking about city mobility, in fact we know you’re working on projects that do. For now, this ‘Connected Mobility concept’ just leaves us asking – is that it?