Driverless

American engineers, scientists, institutions and companies are in the forefront of the fast-advancing “driverless car” phenomenon.

That’s hardly surprising given the continued lead by the U.S. business community in the digital technologies that are propelling it, and the importance of U.S.-based tests such as work the Audi and Volkswagen Electronics Research Lab in Silicon Valley produced with Stanford University, for the Pikes Peak Autonomous Audi TTS.

The pace has only picked up as Audi has shown its Piloted parking technology at this year’s CES exposition, and several states are racing to match the R&D permits allowed by the state of Nevada.

The Big Apple

Audi of America plans to spend $5 billion in North America over the next three years to further strengthen its portfolio and presence in the market. And even before that, the brand just spent $135 million along with sibling marque Volkswagen to open dual showrooms in the heart of Manhattan.

Brand executives helped cut the ribbon on Friday for a new flagship store in the Big Apple, the largest-ever investment by Volkswagen AG in a U.S. real-estate project. The goal is to continue to boost the brands’ presence – and perceived presence – in a U.S. market that has become crucially strategic.

“As part of Audi’s growth strategy, the brand is making major investments in the quality of its dealer network,” Scott Keogh, President of Audi of America, said in a press release. “From facility upgrades to flagship store openings, the Audi dealer network in the U.S. will continue to expand and evolve.”

The Challenge

The new Audi video on YouTube featuring an old science-fiction hero, his modern successor and an Audi S7 works in just about every way a commercial can. It’s already been viewed an astounding four million times, a number that doubled in just a couple of days this week.

Timely? Check. Culturally relevant? Check. Provides a meaningful message about the brand – check – and connects with viewers about it? Big check.

The video titled “The Challenge” pitting Leonard Nimoy against Zachary Quinto, and a Mercedes-Benz against, actually, two Audi models with leading-edge technology. It’s debuting just a week or so before the premiere of the next movie featuring Quinto as the character, and features the original and newest actors to have played one of the sci-fi franchise’s greatest roles.

We won’t say it was only because American movie-goers wanted to get their first look at the Audi R8 e-tron in action. But Iron Man 3 posted the second-biggest domestic opening of any movie, all-time, when it debuted on U.S. screens last weekend.

And the movie already has produced a world-wide gross that is higher than the total for Iron Man 2.

Disney and Marvel grossed an estimated $175 million from screenings in North America that started on Thursday night and ran through Sunday. Iron Man 3 features Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man and his alter ego, industrialist Tony Stark; Gwyneth Paltrow as his girlfriend, Pepper Potts; and the R8 e-tron and Audi S7 Sportback as their rides, respectively.

Movie-industry analysts predicted that Iron Man 3 is on track already to gross more than $1 billion, though perhaps not to match the worldwide total of $1.5 billion for Avengers.

International competitiveness

It was only settling one stone into the dusty ground in east-central Mexico, but with that action AUDI AG may have set off a tectonic shift in the premium-vehicle market in North America and around the world.

Company executives joined local and federal officials in Mexico over the weekend in laying the foundation stone for a $1.3-billion plant that will begin turning out a new version of the Audi Q5 in mid-2016.

In so doing, as Bloomberg put it, Audi is embarking on something that “will be instrumental in [its] push to topple [BMW] as the leading auto brand for wealthy drivers” worldwide.

Steer the story

Having broken all-time opening-box office records in China this week, Iron Man 3 is streaking toward its rendezvous with American theater audiences and its U.S. premiere on Friday. And Audi has been helping build anticipation for that event with a unique online promotion with Marvel that ends tomorrow.

The Iron Man “Steer the Story” online comic-book contest gives fans an opportunity to crowdsource twists in a plot in which Iron Man and Pepper Potts, his girlfriend, are driving an Audi R8 e-tron to attempt to escape the clutches of a villain, Blizzard.

The promotion echoes Iron Man 3 itself, in which Robert Downey Jr. plays Iron Man and his alter ego, industrialist Tony Stark, and Gwyneth Paltrow plays Pepper Potts. Stark drives the Audi R8 e-tron, and Potts drives an Audi S7 Sportback in the film, the third in the Iron Man trilogy – each of which has featured versions of the R8.

Rise of the Q5

In the middle of last year, Audi of America strategists began plotting seriously for the rise of the Audi Q5 to become the brand’s top-selling model in the U.S. market. And with the April sales results announced on Wednesday, that’s exactly what has happened.

The mid-size premium crossover from Audi was the brand’s best-selling vehicle overall last month, with sales of 3,241 units, up 32 percent from a year earlier – and just edging out sales of the traditionally top selling A4 sedan. The A4 franchise has seen some buyers shift to the new Audi allroad from the A4 Avant model that it replaced.

For the year to date, sales of 11,437 Audi Q5 units, up 36 percent, ranked only 211 units behind A4 sales, with the likelihood that Q5 will surpass A4 sales sometime during the year.