Audi Dakar racer illegally dumped

Audi has launched an internal investigation into how one of its outright Dakar rally contenders ended up in an illegal Czech rubbish dump this week.

The high-tech Audi RS Q e-tron hybrid was found illegally abandoned outside Jiríkov, Czechia, alongside piles of other environmental equipment allocated for recycling.

Audi has yet to reveal why the 2022 Dakar racer, which finished ninth outright in the hands of Swedish motorsport legend Mattias Ekström, was junked instead of being allocated to a museum, loaned to Ekström or stored at Audi Sport.

Ekström took the plug-in racer to a stage win on his Dakar debut and was the leading finisher in a three-car team that included Dakar legend Stéphane Peterhansel and double World Rally Champion Carlos Sainz. 

Sainz went on to win the 2024 Dakar in an RS Q e-tron before Audi ended its rally-raid campaign to focus on its 2026 Formula One entry.

The Mayor of Jiríkov, Barbora Šišková, reported that a convoy of trucks dumped at least 200 tons of lithium-ion batteries at a decommissioned sawmill in an environmentally protected area.

"We still don’t know what they brought here and how dangerous it is. It smells a lot like acetone or something like that,” Mayor Šišková told the Seznam Zprávy newspaper.

Besides the Audi raid car, the abandoned recycling material included pieces of wind turbines, aircraft and car parts, circuit boards and copper wires.

“We found batteries, battery cells that can be toxic. It is 100% black business because they are stored in bags, which is not allowed to be stored like this. In addition, they are written kunststoff [plastic], which is, of course, a lie,”  Mayor Šišková said.

The dumped waste load has been traced to an Audi contractor, Roth International (a specialist recycling and disposal company), and is now the subject of an Audi investigation.

"We are currently conducting a comprehensive investigation as part of our compliance processes. In the course of this, we can confirm that Roth International is part of our supply chain,” an Audi spokesperson confirmed.

“The Code of Conduct sets out clear requirements for compliance, environmental and social issues. These sustainability requirements are contractually agreed with our suppliers.

“In cases where supplier companies do not implement the specified measures or do not implement them completely, the business relationship may be terminated in the last instance.”

The automaker has tried to keep its nose clean ever since an Audi-developed software code became Ground Zero for the Volkswagen Group’s $30 billion Dieselgate emissions-cheating scandal in 2015 and its Chairman, Rupert Stadler, plead guilty to fraud in 2023.