PERRY, Ga. — A day after its first U.S. factory was unveiled at a Middle Georgia political rally, Audi spent Sunday insisting the $4 billion project is a business call about tariffs and market share, not politics.
The German luxury brand plans to build premium SUVs at the Middle Georgia Megasite in Peach County. The state says the plant will employ about 4,500 people and reach full output in 2031, turning out as many as 200,000 vehicles a year. Grading is scheduled to start in 2027 and vertical construction in 2028.
Audi leaders said the Georgia choice came out of a roughly three-year search that weighed more than 70 possible locations. The company said the Trump administration asked it to make the reveal at Saturday’s Republican rally, held ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm election.
Tariffs are a big part of the math. Audi ships every vehicle it sells in the U.S. from Europe or Mexico, and the company said import duties cost it 1.2 billion euros last year. Duties on German-built vehicles now stand at 15%, down from 25%. Audi said roughly half of the Georgia plant’s output will be exported, with the Q7, Q8 and Q9 slated for production in the early 2030s.
The announcement lands while parent Volkswagen is cutting deeply at home, with plans to eliminate 50,000 jobs and shut four German plants between 2031 and 2034. Audi executives said the Georgia factory does not move engineering or development work out of Germany.
State officials pitched the megasite on logistics. It sits near Class I rail, within five hours by train of the ports of Savannah and Brunswick, a half-hour drive from a pair of regional airports and roughly an hour and a half from the world’s busiest passenger hub in Atlanta. The Technical College System of Georgia will design training tailored to the plant.
Audi becomes the last of the major German luxury automakers to build in the U.S., following Mercedes-Benz and BMW. Its U.S. deliveries were about flat through the third quarter after a 16% drop from 2024 to 2025.
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