We knew that Audi has been seriously considering building a competitor to the BMW X6 for some time (editor Jay Traugott's favorite car...read his editorial "The Useless BMW X6"). And according to a report coming from autonews.com, Volkswagen Group chief designer Walter de'Silva has confirmed that Audi will produce such a model. Although no arrival date has been given, it'll likely be called the Q6 and it will fit in the lineup between the Q5 and Q7.

The clear goal is to take away sales from BMW as their X6 continues to sell very well. More specifically, Audi wants to surpass BMW as the top-selling premium brand by 2015. What platform it'll be based on is still unclear, but the X6 is derived from the X5, so it's possible Audi will use the Q7 as a base. The X6 starts off at nearly $60,000, so Audi clearly sees the amount of pure profit they can make from a Q6. Let's just hope Audi manages to build something that's more visually pleasing, but with de'Silva running the show, we're fairly confident the final result will look better than the X6.