Audi Q8 E-Tron: Is Audi’s Electric Family SUV Good Enough?

foreign a lot of people ask me Rory what’s that Audi e-tron like is it a decent electric family car has he got a big boot is there room in there for kids how’s the range should I just buy a Tesla and I always say the same thing I don’t know never driven one that is until recently because Audi have just sent me this the brand new Q8 each run and here is my definitive Reddit [Music] [Music] what is it well it’s a big-ish electric SUV at the premium end of the spectrum costing about 70 000 pounds and is a heavily face lifted version of the original e-tron that came to Market in 2018. this one says Audi is better looking more efficient has Superior range and is just more impressive in every conceivable way one thing that I’m not a massive fan of is the name Q8 e-tron Audi already make a standard petrol and plug-in hybrid version of the Q8 and that car is actually bigger than this by a couple of inches in all Dimensions so I’d struggle to call this definitively an electric alternative to those cars also the Q8 had what Audi described as being quite a sporty back this has the exact same sporty back but Audi actually sell a QA each on sportback with a different kind of sporty back if you’re confused then so am I what’s very clear is that it’s a visual Improvement on the previous car it has a better looking front grille which isn’t totally smooth a refreshing change for most electric cars there’s extra black cladding around the grill bringing it in line with the Audi RS e-tron family and the Audi badge is flat the side is almost identical to the previous car but has gorgeous new wheel designs up to 22 inches in size even these Aero Wheels look 

good unusually and there are cameras instead of mirrors on top spec models more on these later the back again is very similar to before with the distinctive light bar but it does come with a new bumper design and Q8 e-tron badging another reason this isn’t a direct replacement for the standard petrol Kuwait is the boot it’s a lot smaller the petrol car has a 605 liter boots this is only 528. it’s actually even smaller than the previous generation each run there’s an okay amount of underfloor storage in there and there’s actually a 62 liter front trunk although getting to it is a bit of a faff because there is no button on the key fob to open it directly and also the Bonnet catch is a little bit fiddly still once you’re in there it’s a decent place to keep your charge cables one area where the e-tron hasn’t changed that much is with the interior but that’s no bad thing because it’s actually quite lovely in here it’s full of these premium materials you’ve got leather you’ve got glossy plastic you’ve got metal in strategic places beautiful stitching the whole thing feels like a premium car built by a premium brand who know what they’re doing when it comes to constructing cars Everything feels really solid as well nothing squeaks nothing rattles it’s all nailed down beautifully in terms of practicality you’ve got a decent sized space down here in the center console with wireless phone charging two cup holders and also a space down here big enough for a can of your favorite coffee or drink of your choice apart from that the infotainment system is pretty much what you’d expect from Audi and that’s good and bad the good side of it is that it’s easy to understand and use you’ve got this separate screen down here if you climate control it is capacitive 

Audi Q8 E-Tron: Is Audi’s Electric Family SUV Good Enough?

but it does work pretty effectively and it vibrates every time you touch it to let you know that you’ve actually selected a Nikon some manufacturers get that very wrong and the upper screen class full of the usual icons that you’d expect in the car but it doesn’t have all the extras that you might find on the latest electric models for example there’s no games on here there’s no web browser I mean all those extras are a little bit unnecessary but when you’re paying this much for a car those features are very conspicuous by their absence up here on the instrument binnacle you’ve got the familiar Audi virtual cockpit does its thing really well looks decent graphics and Maps powered by Google again it’s kind of Aging a bit in my eyes anyway I think Audi need to do something to bring that Kicking and Screaming into whatever Century we are in at this moment one area where they’ve made changes where they maybe shouldn’t have done is with the door mirrors so on the top spec four sprung models which cost 90 to 100 000 pounds you get these cameras instead of mirrors which are attached to screens sounds like a great idea especially for efficiency the car can slip through the air more effectively reducing drag Etc but in practice they’re pretty rubbish the screens themselves are very small smaller than actual mirrors and they’re a bit laggy and the perspective feels a little bit off it’s a bit like playing a computer game when you’re driving in the car also you’ve had Decades of training to look in your peripheral vision for a mirror but instead you’ve got to look to the left and down when you do that you can’t use your other peripheral vision to see ahead of you so I’ve lost count the number of times that I’ve actually nearly 

crashed this car by using these mirrors one other thing I’m going to have a moment about is the blind spot recognition system on most cars you get a light which flashes in your periphery to let you know that you might be crashing into something on your left or right hand side these they don’t have a light instead you get this rubbish little yellow icon on the screen to say that you might be hitting something and that is frankly not good enough don’t buy it in the back there’s loads of space enough for three passengers with good leg and Headroom despite a big sunroof as usual you get a fold down armrest that houses extra storage as well as cup holders on the sensor consoles in front of rear passengers there are two USBC ports and a pretty easy to use panel for controlling the climate in the back there are two battery options in the Q8 e-tron the 50 and 55. the 50 uses an 89 kilowatt hour net or 95 kilow hour gross battery pack while the 55 uses an even larger 106 kilowatt hour battery pack or 114 kilowatt hours gross the former delivers 290 miles while the latter manages 343. [Music] the amount of power you get depends on the version of the car you go for so the 55 has 407 horsepower and will do not to 62 in around five and a half seconds the 50 is a bit slower it has 340 horsepower and will do nauta 62 in around 6 seconds incidentally when I first got this car I jumped in and went for a blast floored it and I thought instantly oh yeah this has to be the slower one definitely but then I looked at the specs and it turned out it’s the 55. it just feels really slow what is impressive is the everyday Driving Experience in 

this car it’s plush it’s quiet it’s refined it’s a lovely thing to drive right let me break that down for you the suspension is soft it’s plush it flows over the road really well the car’s quite heavy so when you end up in a big pothole you really feel that kind of thud as you go into it but apart from that it really soaks up the imperfections in the road really well a lot better than many electric cars in fact and then there’s the quietness exceptionally quiet in this car there’s a lot of things that work in your favor to help with that so you’ve got double glazed Windows double glazed windscreen textile materials lining the wheel arches all the maps have a foam backing to soak up extra noise and it’s just super quiet I mean even the motors live in an acoustic box to minimize that wearing noise that you’d get and I know I slated them earlier on but these stupid Wing camera things yeah I don’t like them but they are good for one thing minimizing wind noise on the move I still wouldn’t have them but they do help with quietness the brakes are okay as well they’re a little bit too sharp at the top end and they don’t allow you to stop 

perfectly smoothly at extremely low speeds but there’s a bigger issue that I’ll find with the brakes and that is they don’t allow for one pedal driving when you lift off the accelerator the thing just coasts along like a normal car in say fifth or sixth gear there’s very little engine braking I guess the reason for that is that Audi wanted this to feel like a normal car which they’ve achieved but there are people out there who do prefer that one pedal driving experience and this doesn’t have it Audi promises this car will get 343 miles on a full charge but in reality that’s unlikely I managed anywhere between 1.5 and 2.5 miles per kilowatt hour in my time with it which means you can expect between 159 and 265 and that’s in Fairly warm weather in Winter expect those figures to drop the e-tron 50 will recharge at 150 kilowatts and the 55 at 170 kilowatts so the 50 will go from 10 to 80 in 28 minutes while the 55 will do the same in 31 minutes on the subject of range and recharging this car does a pretty good job of helping you get to where you need to be so for example let me use the voice navigation system to uh go somewhere navigate to Newcastle so that’s obviously miles away it’s going to find something okay so I’ll choose 

Newcastle and then the car we’ll start route guidance but then it will know I can’t make it to Newcastle so it goes I don’t have enough battery to go there do you want to stop off at charging stations and I say okay and then the car will calculate what charging stations to stop at and for how long so look at this it reckons that I need to stop at ionity in Peterborough for 41 minutes and then top up from 17 and when I get to Newcastle I have 12 that is very useful and very very clever notice as well on the driver display it gives you a bubble to show you your maximum range that is a feature stolen that’s a feature stolen straight off the Nissan Leaf but I’ll allow it okay so what if you’ve had enough of efficiency and you want to have some fun in your QA each one well it actually handles fairly well according to Audi it’s got a 45 stiffer torsional rigidity which does help handling and it is more impressive than the likes of the Mercedes eqc for example but it’s still heavy the thing weighs 2.5 tonnes which I calculated to be about one grand piano more than a Lamborghini Urus quite a sobering thought isn’t it a Urus pulling 

along a grand piano that’s the equivalent of this also fun fact this car can tow 1800 kilograms which is about four and a bit in Grand pianos one of the things I like about driving the QA each one is that everything at your fingertips feels really sturdy and substantial and expensive and that goes for the steering wheel which isn’t heavy but just feels nice and plush the weights of the accelerator even the feel of the indicators everything is is premium so what is my official verdict on the Q8 e-tron well let’s do pros and cons shall we Pros looks really nice very luxurious and very pleasant to drive cons not very efficient quite expensive and a little bit underwhelming when it comes to Performance I’d say there’s also the fact that it doesn’t really push the boundaries as far as I’d like it feels like quite a safe sensible car that doesn’t do anything to stand out there’s a ton of Rivals out there that have quirky features that are really interesting Netflix web browsers games HEPA filters hyper screens this has none of that is it a bit too sensible maybe not if that’s what you’re looking for but in a world where electric cars are all pretty similar to drive I think the biggest challenge is going to be for manufacturers to find ways of making their cars stand out and I’m not sure that each run does a good enough job of that however if you’re the kind of person that doesn’t want to stand out that just wants quality well maybe this cars for you [Music] foreign [Music]