Audi A6 Sportback e-tron Review & Prices

The Audi A6 e-tron is a large and classy electric car, which provides an alternative to the BMW i5 and Mercedes EQE - until now, that gap in Audi’s range was filled by the e-tron GT, which is really more like a sports car with four doors.

The A6 e-tron is much more sensible than the e-tron GT, but still looks good doing it - it’s like finally admitting that your super-fashionable high heels are actually hideously uncomfortable to walk in, and swapping them out instead for a really stylish pair of trainers. They still stand out, but they do the job much better.

The A6 e-tron shouldn’t be confused with the regular Audi A6. Without the e-tron suffix, the Audi A6 is a conventional petrol or diesel-powered saloon car, based on totally different mechanicals to the A6 e-tron.

The lower, sleeker A6 is actually very similar under the skin to the Q6 e-tron SUV, and that’s not a bad thing at all. It means you get a choice of two massive battery packs, a high-tech interior with more screens than you’ll know what to do with, and excellent safety scores that should make using the A6 e-tron as a family car very reassuring.

Audi A6 Sportback e-tron: Electric range, battery and charging data

Range: 346-464 miles
Efficiency: 3.5-4.6 miles per kWh
Battery size: 83kWh / 100kWh
Max charge speed: 225kW / 270kW
Charge time AC: 8h, 0-100%, 11kW / 10h, 0-100%, 11kW
Charge time DC: 21m, 10-80%, 225kW / 21m, 10-80%, 270kW
Charge port location: Right side rear
Power outputs: 326hp / 380hp / 462hp

You can also choose from two body styles - the A6 e-tron Sportback, or the A6 e-tron Avant. Both look pretty sleek, though the Avant (estate, for normal folk) is better-resolved at the rear - the Sportback’s boot lid is a bit truncated and sits too high.

At the front, you can tell the e-tron is a fully electric car because it gets a filled-in version of Audi’s distinctive grille. It’s flanked by high-set, slim LED daytime running lights with the main headlight units concealed in a glossy black bumper insert.

Inside, it’s just like the Q6 e-tron, but without the commanding SUV driving position. In fact, you sit quite low for an electric car, with a very high-tech dashboard ahead of you. All versions get a driver information display and a huge centre touchscreen, but top-spec models can have as many as four screens with a head-up display as well as a separate screen for the passenger to watch movies or play with settings on.

It’s all very posh and high-tech, but it doesn’t feel quite as solid as Audis of old did - and there’s definitely too many surfaces covered in fingerprinty, gloss black plastic.

Rear passengers are pretty well treated, with decent leg and headroom for two occupants, and the boot is a good size at 502 litres - bigger than its main alternatives. You also get the benefit of a hatchback tailgate, much better for loading large items than the saloon boots on the Mercedes EQE and BMW i5.

To drive, the A6 e-tron is biased towards comfort and relaxation. That does mean it’s not as satisfying in the corners as a BMW i5, but it’s more soothing on a long motorway trip. It’s extremely quiet and soaks up bumps extremely well. Long journeys should be pretty easy, too - the best A6 e-tron has a range of well over 400 miles, officially.

So if this high-tech cruiser seems like the electric car for you, check out our Audi A6 Sportback e-tron deals, or get a great Audi A6 Sportback e-tron lease deal. You can check out used Audis for sale, or even sell your old car through Carwow.

There are three trim levels and three performance levels for the A6 Sportback e-tron. The cheapest is the Sport trim with the smaller battery - it starts at just over £63,000. There’s a substantial jump to almost £71,000 if you want the bigger battery, but in the basic trim this does give you a hugely impressive 464-mile range (officially).

A further £5,000 or so gets you the e-tron quattro, the fastest of the ‘normal’ A6 e-tron range - if you want more performance, you’ll need the faster S6 e-tron.

S line trim costs around £3,500 on top of Sport and adds a sleeker styling package and sportier interior - Audi expects most buyers to go for this. Top-spec Edition 1 cars come in at more than £71,000 - almost £85,000 if you want the quattro powertrain - but do come fully loaded.

Those prices are still less than a BMW i5 or Mercedes EQE, however, both of which demand closer to £70,000 as their starting price.

Perfect for long motorway trips with exceptional refinement, but a BMW i5 is more fun in the corners

In town

The A6 Sportback e-tron is quite low-set, so you miss the commanding driving position you’d get with its Q6 e-tron sibling. It also feels quite large from the driver’s seat, though light steering, reasonable visibility and a glut of cameras and sensors means it’s not too intimidating to drive through tight city streets.

The suspension is very good at ironing out the worst potholes and speed bumps, and the steering and pedals are all nicely progressive so it’s easy to drive smoothly. Just avoid the camera-based ‘virtual mirrors’ if you park in town a lot - they’re not as good as a regular reflective set, as they don’t have such a wide angle.

On the motorway

All versions of the A6 e-tron get adaptive cruise control and lane-keeping aids as standard, and they all work very smoothly, giving you lots of reassurance. It’s also reassuringly quiet on the motorway - Audi says the A6 Sportback e-tron is its most aerodynamic car ever, and that’s borne out with the almost total absence of wind noise.

The electric motors are obviously nearly silent, too, and road noise is well-contained - the A6 e-tron rivals some top-tier luxury cars for refinement.

The suspension soaks up bumps very well at speed too, and even the slowest model has more than enough grunt to get up to speed decisively on a slip road.

On a twisty road

When you start to push the A6 Sportback e-tron on a twisty road, you do start to notice the car’s size and weight - it doesn’t seem to shrink around you like a BMW i5 does. The steering, too, remains light and accurate but feels rather dead with no feedback about what the front wheels are doing.

With plenty of power and nicely-weighted controls,it’s easy enough to get into a nice rhythm of stringing corners together, but the A6 e-tron doesn’t encourage spirited driving.

Lots of room in the front seats and a useful hatchback boot, but rear space isn’t as generous

The A6 e-tron’s front seats are really roomy and adjust a really long way - great for very tall drivers. It does feel quite stingy, though, that not all models get electric adjustments for the seats as standard - especially considering the price of the car.

The door bins are a little on the small side and storage for smaller items or pocket detritus is limited - you’ll have to use the cupholders or store stuff under the armrest or in the glovebox. There’s a wireless phone charging pad which is in a useful spot, though, and it keeps your phone close to hand while angling the screen away from you for minimum distractions.

Space in the back seats

The rear seats aren’t quite as capacious as the front - legroom and headroom are quite good, but because the floor is very high (due to the batteries underneath) you do feel like you’re sitting with your knees around your ears.

If you’re comfortable stretching your legs out then this may not bother you, however there’s no denying that the BMW i5 or Mercedes EQE have more to offer for backseat occupants. There is, however, a good amount of space for a child seat, and ISOFIX points on both outer rear seats.

Boot space

Interestingly, the A6 Sportback e-tron offers exactly the same quoted boot space as its Avant (estate) sibling - so while the Avant model has a rather pokey boot compared to its alternatives, the Sportback’s is pretty large.

At 502 litres, it comfortably beats the 490-litre and 430-litre BMW i5 and Mercedes EQE. Usefully, it gets a hatchback boot opening rather than the saloon body of those cars, which means it’s much better for fitting large items in. A VW ID7 is a better bet if ultimate space is your goal, though if that’s the case then you’d be better off with the estate versions of any of these cars.

Even though quoted space is the same in both the Sportback and Avant, that refers to the room under the parcel shelf and the A6 Avant e-tron will still be a superior companion if you need to load up to the roof or regularly carry big, square items that would hit the Sportback’s rear window. There’s also a 27-litre front boot in both models, which is ideal to store your charging cables in.

Screen-heavy interior is easier to use than some alternatives, but doesn’t feel as well-built as Audis of old

If you spec your A6 Sportback e-tron up to the gunnels, you can have as many as six displays in the car. As standard, you get two - an 11.9-inch driver information display and a 14.5-inch infotainment screen.

However, peruse the higher trim levels and options lists and you can add to this with a large, high-definition head-up display, a screen at both ends of the dashboard for the virtual (camera) wing mirrors, and a further 10.9-inch display for the front passenger. The head-up display is the only one of these that’s actually worth paying extra for, though.

The infotainment display is the one you’ll be interacting with most - it’s big, clear and fast to respond. The menu system can be a bit labyrinthine, though, and physical controls are few and far between. It’s bad enough that the climate controls take place through the touchscreen, but the touch-sensitive controls on the steering wheel and particularly the confusing lighting/mirrors/windows panel on the door don’t feel obvious at first.

Build quality also isn’t quite up to snuff when you consider how solid the last generation of Audi interiors felt. It’s not as creaky as a Mercedes dashboard, but the A6 Sportback e-tron’s fixtures and materials just don’t feel as dense or as rich as those in the BMW i5.

It’s also quite specification-dependent. Light materials improve the A6 e-tron’s interior, as it can feel quite dark - but all versions do get too much fingerprint-attracting piano black plastic. And if you don’t opt for the passenger display, you get a big slab of plastic instead, which looks quite cheap and nasty.

The A6 Sportback e-tron offers a range of three motors and two batteries, but all have pretty impressive range on offer.

The entry-level car has a single 326hp motor powering the rear wheels. It has a maximum range of 382 miles, matching the entry-level BMW i5.

Next up is the e-tron Performance, which also has a single motor - but it produces 380hp for slightly improved performance. Maximum range is an impressive 463 miles thanks to its larger battery pack - that’s more than the best BMW i5 or Mercedes EQE, and is in fact second only to the larger Mercedes EQS as the longest-range EV currently on sale in the UK.

The top of the ‘regular’ A6 e-tron range is the quattro model. This gets the same large battery as the Performance but has twin electric motors producing a maximum of 462hp - range is therefore reduced to a still-impressive 438 miles.

During our time in the e-tron we saw a figure much, much lower than that though - lower than 300 in our test model. We’ll look forward to taking the A6 e-tron for a longer drive to confirm this.

The smaller battery models can top up at a maximum rate of 225kW, or 270kW for the larger battery - bringing a 10-80% charge time of 21 minutes for both, if connected to a suitably powerful public charger. Top-up times at home will be lengthy though due to those large capacity batteries.

As an electric car, the A6 Sportback e-tron pays the lowest rate of first year road tax and company car benefit-in-kind tax.

The A6 e-tron range - both Sportback and Avant - scored five stars in Euro NCAP safety testing, with a particularly impressive score for adult and child occupant protection of 92% and 91% respectively. In terms of crash protection, that makes it one of the safest cars you can buy today.

All models come with the expected safety equipment, as well as some nice extras such as dynamic LEDs in the daytime running lights which can communicate danger to other drivers or a reading in the head-up display that tells you when you’re too close to the car in front. All of the more annoying functions can be turned off with a physical shortcut button and one tap on the touchscreen, which is nice.

Audi performed pretty poorly in the 2024 Driver Power owner satisfaction survey, coming 27th out of 32 brands. The A6 Sportback e-tron sits on a new platform, though, so it’s too soon to gauge its reliability just yet.

Like the rest of the Audi range the A6 Sportback e-tron gets a pretty bog-standard three-year, 60,000-mile warranty, with the battery warranted separately for eight years and 100,000 miles. That’s about standard for premium electric cars.