Audi has spent the last decade perfecting the art of the inoffensive premium vehicle. But at last, Audi has finally stopped trying to build electric cars by simply hollowing out its old petrol ones and hoping for the best.
The Q6 e-tron Performance is the first Audi built on the Premium Platform Electric (PPE), a high-tech skateboard shared with the Porsche Macan EV.
I adopted the Q6 e-tron Performance for a couple weeks, including a week as the family city taxi, and a week down the south coast of NSW, helping me to test out its impressive range claims of 641km WLTP.
While the “quattro” version gets the glory for fast acceleration (0-100km/h in 5.9 compared to the Performance’s 6.6), I really think this Performance model is the one you actually want. It ditches the front motor to save weight and electricity, making it more than capable of traveling from Sydney to the far edges of the NSW coast.
The 100kWh battery didn’t quite hit the claimed 641km WLTP range claimed during my time with it. In the real world where you actually use aircon, have several passengers, and travel on highways sometimes long distances, I still found myself comfortably beating the 500km checkpoint.
On the highway I was averaging about 20kWh/100kms, and in the city about 18kWh/100kms. Not record breaking efficiency by any means, but let’s be honest, you’re not buying this car or any luxury family SUV for its efficiency credentials.
One of the major selling points of this EV is the 800-volt architecture. This allows the Q6 Performance to pull 260kW from the grid while charging. A 21-minute pitstop gets you back to 80 per cent charge; it’s essentially a 2.2-tonne smartphone with a super-fast charger.
In an age of electric excess, where family cars are routinely gifted with the neck-snapping ferocity of a supercar, the Q6’s 6.6-second sprint feels refreshingly dignified. It is smooth, composed, and remarkably hushed. A serenity I appreciated during a rare, 40-minute ceasefire from the back seats on our way back up from the south coast of NSW.
However, as the tranquility shattered and gave way to the inevitable toddler chaos, the irony of the modern luxury cabin became clear. Audi has spent a fortune on soundproofing to create a digital sanctuary, yet in a family SUV, that silence is merely a blank canvas waiting to be painted with the high-definition screams of a child’s existential crisis.
Inside the vehicle is a digital fortress. You’ve got the “Digital Stage” screens – a curved wall of OLED glass that stretches right across the driver and passenger seats, including a 10.9-inch passenger display which gives the passenger their own screen for watching videos, or looking at the map and travel stats as if they were in an passenger airplane.
The passenger screen can also activate a “digital curtain” to ensure the driver remains blissfully unaware of whatever the passenger is watching. The optimist in me loves the idea of a separate screen so I can have the centre screen all to myself uninterrupted. The cynic in me might see it as the ultimate concession to our modern inability to spend five minutes in a car without a glowing rectangle for company.
The driver, meanwhile, gets their own private screen in the form of an Augmented Reality HUD that draws arrows on the road.
The rest of the cabin feels exactly as a six-figure Audi should – expensive and tactile, that is until the moment you engage with the indicator stalks. One suspects they have been lifted straight from the parts bin of a base-model Volkswagen Golf, providing a thin, plastic tactile experience that sits very uncomfortably alongside the rest of the car’s premium ambitions.
In an act of rare masochism, I was determined to avoid my usual reflex of immediately retreating into the familiar, cushioned embrace of Apple CarPlay. I forced myself to live within Audi’s own ecosystem, expecting the usual digital swamp of lagging maps and impenetrable menus.
To my genuine surprise, I found a system that actually works. The native software is crisp, responsive, and clever enough that the usual ‘CarPlay-by-default’ instinct simply never kicked in. It is a sad indictment of the industry that a functioning map feels like a revolution, but here we are.
With 526 litres of space to play with, the boot isn’t quite a cavernous void, but it is deeply practical. It managed to swallow an impressive collection of weekend bags, beach towels, and the miscellaneous ‘just in case’ items.
But the Q6’s true pièce de résistance is its lighting. With world-first active digital signatures, you can toggle between eight different ‘expressions’ for the LEDs. It’s all very clever, though I suspect most owners will pick a light signature on day one and never touch it again.
While I acknowledge the idea of labelling a vehicle with a six-figure price tag as “good value” is questionable, in the increasingly populated landscape of the Australian EV market, the Audi Q6 e-tron Performance makes a surprisingly compelling fiscal case for itself.
While a $115,500 starting price is undeniably a non-sensible amount of money for most, it can also be seen as a figure that starts to look rather clever when you realise it undercuts the massive Kia EV9 and the Hyundai IONIQ 9.
Consider also that it sits on the exact same PPE architecture as the new electric Porsche Macan, which is a car that demands a significantly higher premium for the privilege of a different crest on the bonnet.
By opting for the Q6, you are getting the same 800-volt architecture, the same ultra-rapid 260kW charging, and the same sophisticated battery management, but with enough change left over to pay for your electricity for the next decade or more. In the world of luxury family SUVs, the Q6 e-tron could be as sensible a purchase as you can possibly make.
Sam is Chief Operating Officer for Renew Economy and EV Media. Sam has been working with Renew Economy and One Step Off The Grid since 2014 and with The Driven since its inception in 2017. Sam is also the host of The Driven Podcast.