• Q6 E-Tron EV is Audi’s first on PPE platform shared with Porsche
• Arrives before the end of the year in Q6 and SQ6 forms
• California drive suggested around 300 miles from 100 kwh isn’t a stretch
• Roomy, comfortable interior and good ride quality; quirky regenerative braking

With its 2025 Q6 E-Tron lineup, Audi is helping solve a pesky logic problem that has plagued the whole round of electric sport-utility vehicle entries from German luxury brands over the past few years. 

SUVs are today’s family vehicles of choice. And luxury brands love pointing out that time is the new luxury. 

Then, why are so many luxury electric SUVs time bandits, leaving you to spend more time in the outer fringes of big-box parking lots charging up for the next stretch on the highway—while those in the mass-market Teslas, Hyundais, and Kias come and go?

The German luxury establishment might finally get it and be fixing this conundrum with next-generation EVs. But Porsche aside, Audi’s the only one here right now with circa-20-minute charging in a roomy-but-not humongous two-row luxury vehicle. 

In a first drive experience last week in the 2025 Audi Q6, I didn’t get far enough to warrant a road-trip charge; but it helped underscore that this new vehicle family is generally far better at avoiding a charging stop than its Q4 E-Tron and Q8 E-Tron counterparts.

Q6 E-Tron family is mostly over the 300-mile mark

The Audi Q6 E-Tron family’s driving range spans from 321 miles for the rear-wheel-drive Q6 E-tron, to 307 miles in E-Tron quattro (dual-motor all-wheel-drive) form, to 275 miles in SQ6 E-Tron quattro form. 

Over an 83-mile drive with the Q6 E-Tron quattro and a 102-mile drive in the SQ6—both emphasizing a combination of tightly curved Sonoma two-laners with short stints on US-101, we averaged 3.0 miles per kwh overall. That’s an excellent result considering we were also driving to explore the ride, handling, and overall dynamics of the vehicle—I’ll get to that shortly—without a lot of heed to efficient driving. It should also be noted that we saw 2.9 mi/kwh in the Q6 E-Tron and 3.1 mi/kwh in the SQ6—perhaps more an indication of some additional afternoon traffic than anything else. 

Audi says that compared to the Q8 E-Tron, the Q6 E-Tron has a 33% improvement in performance and a 30% reduction in energy consumption. A shift to an 800 volts for the battery and propulsion system, borrowing wisdom from the Porsche Taycan and related Audi E-Tron GT, is at the core of the boost in efficiency and range, which makes the charging gains all the more meaningful. 

Audi Q6 E-Tron aims for middle, makes it lux

With them, the Q6 E-Tron does indeed slot right into the heart of Audi’s lineup—especially right into the middle of its North American lineup. It’s about eight inches longer than the Q4 E-Tron and a foot shorter than the Audi Q8 E-Tron, but it ends up feeling nearly as big inside as the latter. And while its 187.8 inches of overall length and 113.7-inch wheelbase are only 3.5 and 2.7 inches greater than that of the Q5 gasoline SUV—with less than a couple inches extra in overall height and width—the Q6 feels almost a size larger. 

Those packaging advantages over the Q5 are made possible by what the Q6 was built on. It’s the launch vehicle for Premium Platform Electric (PPE), a dedicated EV platform that didn’t allow for combustion-engine space and aimed for reduced component dimensions and weight, plus strong performance. Initially shared with the Porsche Macan Electric, PPE is set to be utilized by the Q6 Sportback and A6 sedan lineup, both on the way next year. 

The packaging isn’t all perfect. If there’s a flaw here it’s that the rear door cuts are a little too short. While it means a little wedging for taller folks to get in (or a smaller space for leaning in on tots), there was plenty of space for this 6-foot-6 beanpole to sit behind myself. 

The floor is low, signaling some smart packaging choices with the battery pack, and there’s a 2.3-cubic-foot frunk that’s about the right size for a large daypack or carry-on—or stashing your mobile charge cord. In back, you get 30.2 cubic feet of cargo space with the rear seatback up, or 60.2 cubic feet with them flipped forward—a significant amount more than the Q5’s 25.9 and 54.1 cubic feet.

 

Q6 E-Tron batteries, motors, and more

What’s underneath? Keeping the battery pack modestly sized was a great start. Adding up to 100 kwh gross, or 94.4 kwh usable, it’s configured around 12 modules and 15 prismatic cells per module—for a total of 180 cells. It’s less complex versus the Q8 E-Tron’s 36 modules and 432 total cells, and the new pack allows individual modules to easily be replaced.

All models have a permanent-magnet motor unit at the rear wheels, and versions with quattro all-wheel drive get an induction motor at the front wheels. That essentially allows them to switch off the front motor, without drag, in cruising and light coasting situations, and weight savings and silicon carbide power electronics save weight and energy here, too. 

While the battery capacity may be the same, Audi is using two different EV battery cell chemistries, from two different global suppliers—Samsung SDI and CATL. Their lithium nickel cobalt aluminum oxide (NCA) and nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) cells, due to slight variations optimizing the charge, get to 80% in 22 or 21 minutes, respectively—with quattro and SQ6 versions getting the NMC cells for their slightly better tolerance of heat in performance situations. 

Q6 E-Tron charging, brake regen

Fast-charging peaks at 260 and 270 kw, respectively, for these packs, with the 350-kw CCS DC fast-charging connectors that are increasingly common in the U.S. An adapter for Tesla NACS connectors is set to arrive in the next year. On DC fast-charging equipment limited to less than 800 volts—like much of the Tesla Supercharger network at present—Audi’s enabled 400V charging at a peak around 135 kw, by running the pack as two parallel 400-volt packs, allowing that 10-80% charge in around 35 minutes. Audi says that with a predictive thermal management system and battery management controller developed for this platform, fast-charges will be quicker and more efficient, and it’s planning to add a manual preconditioning setting for the U.S. (to allow for stations that aren’t yet in route planning, for instance). 

For home charging, by the way, the 9.6-kw onboard charger allows you to tap into charge ports on either side of the vehicle (DC only on the driver’s side), and with a home charge connector at that power level, on a 50-amp circuit, a full charge should take no more than 10 hours. 

The Q6 E-Tron packs a lot of energy back away to the battery pack every time you slow or stop; but it’s a different approach than what you’ll find in many other EVs. In its default settings, the Q6 lineup likes to glide when you lift off the accelerator, unless you deliberately select other settings at each key cycle. Audi points out that its stepped up the actual brake regeneration that you tap into when stepping on the brake pedal, to a maximum of 0.30 g, a level that many stops only use the friction pads the past few feet. 

Shift to ‘D’ and the default setting takes you to an Auto deceleration mode that is a bit of a black box. It taps into inputs from the forward-facing camera, including the distance to vehicles ahead, as well as traffic and navigation data, making decisions about the curves along the road ahead—but arriving at unpredictable levels of regen that aren’t confirmed on the dash as you lift off the accelerator. Attempting to glide around a roundabout, for instance, warranted an unexpected ramp-up in regen. 

You do have choices, though, and it’s the way to go. From ‘D’ with the steering-wheel paddles you can click through levels 0, 1, and 2, ranging from a flat-neutral coast, to 0.06 g (about like a gasoline car in ‘D’), to 0.15 g (think downshifting one gear). Select ‘B’ on the very odd shift selector—one of my peeves with this vehicle—and you dial up a completely different personality, with a full 0.25 g of regen when you lift off the accelerator. 

Audi Q6 E-Tron price and value

The 2025 Audi Q6 E-Tron quattro we spent much of the day with started at $67,095, including the $1,295 destination fee, and added the $6,800 Prestige package, $1,300 Warm Weather package (leather upholstery, cooled front seats, Bang & Olufsen audio), and $1,000 20-inch wheel package. That brought the total as tested to $76,195.

The quattro is right in the middle of the lineup, and it makes 356 hp in its launch mode and can get to 60 mph in 4.9 seconds. Rear-wheel-drive Q6 E-Tron versions make 322 hp and take 6.3 seconds. SQ6 E-Tron bump power to 509 hp and can get from 0-60 mph in 4.1 seconds. 

The Prestige package, which I didn’t test a Q6 E-Tron without, adds two features that might change the fundamental feel of the vehicle: an adaptive air suspension, and acoustic glass in front. 

To those two points: The Q6 E-Tron doesn’t feel tuned like a performance vehicle, and we noted a fair amount of pitchiness that got in the way of backroad poise. This isn’t a vehicle that invites driving roads. Despite all the weight-saving measures in the propulsion system, this vehicle weighs nearly 5,300 pounds—but the air suspension and buttoned-down damping do help calm big body motions under hard acceleration and strong braking, making it feel very confident overall.  

But as I note in a companion review of the 2025 Audi SQ6 over at Motor Authority, what amounts to a collective set of tuning and hardware differences amounts to a very different-feeling vehicle that I actually enjoyed driving much more, while only modestly more expensive and less efficient. 

Q6 E-Tron Prestige versions also get acoustic front glass, and it’s hard to tell what additional noise this helps quell, as the Q6 E-Tron is very, very quiet inside—so much that it made us question why Audi has three simulated propulsion levels inside, with none of them completely off. 

Q6 E-Tron family gets all-new interface

The Prestige package also includes some head-turning personalized OLED exterior lighting, plus a noteworthy piece of technology in front of the passenger—a 10.9-inch front passenger display, with an active privacy filter, that lets the passenger view, communicate, or play DJ. 

It’s all part of a revamped interface the brand is calling the Audi Digital Stage, wrapping a 11.9-inch configurable cockpit screen with a 14.5-inch OLED touchscreen in a curved panoramic design, as well as an augmented reality head-up display that seemed to jam a lot of info in front of the driver (we turned it off, but appreciated the directional lighting within the dash. It’s shifted seemingly all of the climate controls into the screen area, but over the course of a day’s drive I found most of the controls, with a basic menu of icons on the left rail signifying items like sound, navigation, phone, and the like, quite intuitive. 

Audi has also added a new AI-informed digital assistant that can perform some tasks (like turning down the very strong heated seats) flawlessly—and it doesn’t appear to need a data connection for everything. 

While the Q8 E-Tron (and its E-Tron SUV predecessor) was among the first electric SUVs on the market—a full year before the Tesla Model Y—the brand has shown it’s learned and improved in nearly every respect with the Q6 E-Tron and its underlying PPE platform. For those holding out for better-driving, longer-range, faster-charging luxury EVs, they’re here.