Audi R8 Full-LED-headlight

Audi AG (Xetra: NSU) is a German automobile manufacturer, from supermini to crossover SUVs in various body styles and price ranges that are marketed under the Audi brand (German pronunciation: [ˈaʊdi]), positioned as the premium brand within the Volkswagen Group.

The company is headquartered in Ingolstadt, Germany, and has been a wholly owned (99.55%) subsidiary of Volkswagen AG since 1966, following a phased purchase of its predecessor, Auto Union, from its former owner, Daimler-Benz. Volkswagen relaunched the Audi brand with the 1965 introduction of the Audi F103 series.

The company name is based on the surname of the founder August Horch, his surname meaning listen in German—which, when translated into Latin, becomes Audi. The four rings each represent individual car companies that banded together to create the union.

An automobile, autocar, motor car or car is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor. Most definitions of the term specify that automobiles are designed to run primarily on roads, to have seating for one to eight people, to typically have four wheels, and to be constructed principally for the transport of people rather than goods.

The term motorcar has also been used in the context of electrified rail systems to denote a car which functions as a small locomotive but also provides space for passengers and baggage. These locomotive cars were often used on suburban routes by both interurban and intercity railroad systems.

There are approximately 600 million passenger cars worldwide (roughly one car per eleven people). Around the world, there were about 806 million cars and light trucks on the road in 2007; the engines of these burn over a billion cubic meters (260 billion US gallons) of petrol/gasoline and diesel fuel yearly. The numbers are increasing rapidly, especially in China and India.