Audi's showroom configurator reached over 1,000 dealerships

The picture

On 28 February 2019, a post on Unreal Engine's own blog reported findings from a Forrester Consulting study Epic Games commissioned, and described Audi's real-time product-visualization system for dealerships, which lets customers see a chosen car with selected options "even if the vehicle isn't physically there." The post states the system was "currently deployed at more than 1,000 Audi showrooms worldwide, with more to come," quoting Thomas Zuchtriegel of Audi Business Innovation GmbH: "We want to raise the bar...we intend to use Unreal Engine within our website for the car configurator."

What the documents show

The Forrester figures — 94 percent of surveyed manufacturing, automotive and aerospace respondents calling real-time rendering vital to reducing design errors, 92 percent citing immersive technology's importance, 81 percent citing productivity gains — are a commissioned survey's reported results, not an Audi-specific measurement. The "1,000 showrooms" figure is Unreal's own blog reporting a customer deployment count as of February 2019, not an independently audited installation record. Unreal Engine's current automotive page, retrieved 16 September 2026, still lists "build photorealistic configurators" among its stated automotive use cases, without naming Audi's specific figure today.

What it is allowed to decide

A showroom configurator supports Class 3, Commercial decisions: helping a buyer choose options before purchase, not an engineering or manufacturing determination. It carries a working Optical presentation capability, as the vendor describes real-time rendering of chosen configurations, but neither source states how the underlying geometry was validated against the vehicle's actual manufacturing data, so no Dimensional authority for manufacturing is established here. Nothing in either document describes version control over the configurator's asset pipeline, so Auditability is not established either.

The disclosure label

A showroom configurator screen could carry a label stating: this visualization is a real-time product configurator reported by Unreal Engine as deployed to Audi showrooms, current as retrieved 16 September 2026; it holds a stated Optical presentation capability; it does not hold Dimensional authority for manufacturing or Auditability absent separate confirmation. Audi's retail digital team would plausibly assert this label.

• Is the 2019 count of more than 1,000 showrooms still accurate, or has no newer figure been published?
• Does the configurator draw from the same CAD data used for engineering, or a separately prepared visualization asset, since neither source specifies this?
• Did Audi extend the tool to its own website configurator as Zuchtriegel stated an intent to do, or does that remain unconfirmed by a later source?

A vendor blog reporting a customer's deployment scale is useful evidence of reach, not of engineering fidelity. The configurator's job, on these sources, is to sell a configuration — not to certify one.