Audi Q8 Sportback e-tron Review & Prices

The Audi Q8 e-tron Sportback is, behind the badge, actually the same e-tron quattro electric SUV that was launched way back in 2018. The Q8 badging bit is rather like one of those football teams that re-names itself when it’s fallen out of the league — new name, same team behind it.

The Q8 e-tron Sportback is the sleeker of the two electric Q8 models (confusingly, there’s still a petrol and diesel Q8 model, entirely unrelated to this e-tron, on sale) with the sloping rear end that means it gets the Sportback name. It’s not actually a lot less practical than the standard tall-roofed version, though. It goes up against the likes of the BMW iX, the Mercedes EQE SUV, and the Polestar 3.

As well as the new badge, the Audi Q8 e-tron Sportback really does have a new physical badge, a flatter, simpler version of the famed Audi four rings, set into a redesigned grille. That’s the only major change on the outside, although the styling at the rear is a little more sporty than before, and there are new alloy wheel options and colour choices. You can actually have those big door mirrors replaced with more aerodynamically efficient cameras, if you like.

Inside, the cabin of the Q8 e-tron Sportback is much the same as it used to be. The software on the three screens (one for infotainment, one for climate controls, and a digital instrument panel) has been updated, and there are some small tweaks to the dashboard trim and seat materials, but it’s all basically the same as before. No harm — it’s a handsome and well-made interior.

There’s lots of storage space in the front of the cabin, and plenty of room for even tall people in both front and rear. Ignore the sloping roofline — it hasn’t seriously impacted cabin space at all, and only marginally affects the boot.

In fact, at 528 litres, you only lose around 30 litres of luggage space compared to the standard, SUV-shaped Q8 e-tron. That’s plenty of space, and more than you get in the BMW iX, the Polestar 3, and the Mercedes EQE SUV. If you need more boot space than this, you’ll have to trade up to a Mercedes EQS SUV or Volvo EX90. There’s also a little bit of storage under the bonnet to stash charging cables.

There’s a choice of battery capacities for the Q8 e-tron Sportback. The 340hp ’50’ model (no, Audi model numbers don’t make much sense to us either…) comes with an 89kWh battery and a range of up to 290 miles. The pricier, more powerful, 408hp ’55’ model comes with a 106kWh battery and a claimed range of 343 miles. You’ll be doing well to get better than 250 miles out of either of them, though.

The Q8 e-tron Sportback might be more sleek on the outside than the regular Q8 e-tron, but it’s still a big car — five metres from bow to stern — and feels every millimetre of that when you’re in town. The combination of a relatively low-set seat (by SUV standards) and that sloped roof means visibility isn’t great, even though there’s a good all-round camera system. Those optional door-mounted rear view cameras aren’t the best, though — a traditional mirror gives you a better view.

On motorways, the Q8 e-tron Sportback does a great job, though. The air suspension means it’s relaxed and comfortable, and things like wind and tyre noise are close to absent. There’s plenty of power, too, even in the 50 version but long journeys expose that relatively poor range.

On a twisty road, the Q8 e-tron Sportback’s weight (2,585kg…) plays against it and though the steering feels weighty and the body stays pretty flat, it’s just to flat-footed to be much fun. The best bit is the way the all-wheel drive electric punch hauls you up and out of corners.

The Audi Q8 e-tron Sportback is one of the better-looking electric SUVs out there, and it’s surprisingly roomy considering that sloping rear roof. It does feel heavy to drive though — a Polestar 3 is much more fun — and the real-world range is quite poor.

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The Audi Q8 e-tron Sportback is quite competitively priced relative to its main opposition. In fact, a basic Q8 e-tron Sportback can be considered a bit of a bargain, as where most of its alternatives will only give you a single motor and rear-wheel drive, the Q8 e-tron comes as standard with two electric motors and quattro all-wheel drive.

It also has a bigger boot than its most direct alternatives — the BMW iX, the Polestar 3, and the Mercedes EQE SUV — and if you need more space then the likes of the Mercedes EQS SUV and Volvo EX90 are much more expensive. Both the BMW iX and Mercedes EQE SUV are priced at pretty much the same level as the Audi, and only the basic version of the Polestar 3 actually undercuts it on price.

The Audi Q8 e-tron Sportback majors on comfort and refinement, but it’s too big and heavy to be any fun, and the range isn’t brilliant

In town

The Audi Q8 e-tron Sportback is a big, chunky car and it definitely feels it from behind the wheel. That’s amplified by the fact that, for an SUV, you actually sit quite low and the sloping roofline of this Sportback model does cut off your rear visibility a bit.

That said, the Q8 e-tron actually feels pretty good around town. The electric motors mean you can accelerate smoothly, and the regenerative braking — using the electric motors to slow you down while topping up the battery slightly — can be adjusted using the paddles behind the steering wheel. There’s no specific one-pedal mode for around town, though.

The steering isn’t over-light, but it’s easy enough to swing the Q8 e-tron around, and the sensors and parking camera that come as standard help when slipping into a small parking space. Higher-spec models come with little cameras mounted on the doors instead of normal mirrors, which show what they can see on little digital panels on the inside of the doors. This is better for aerodynamics, but the cameras aren’t as useful in what they can see as a regular mirror.

The best bit around town is the standard-fit air suspension, which — combined with the Q8 e-tron’s chunky kerb weight — does a great job of smoothing out urban bumps and lumps.

On the motorway

The Audi Q8 e-tron Sportback is a fabulously comfortable motorway cruiser. That air suspension does just as good a job at keeping everything calm and effortless on motorways as it does around town, and the Q8 e-tron’s cabin is a seriously quiet space even at 70mph — all the better to enjoy the optional Bang + Olufsen stereo…

There’s adaptive cruise control and lane-keeping steering which help to take the sting out of long journeys, and the door-mounted cameras come into their own a bit more here, with very good blind spot monitoring — although we’d still prefer standard mirrors overall.

The problem is that while the Q8 e-tron is great at pounding up and down motorways, the battery isn’t. While Audi claims a maximum range of 333 miles for the big-battery ’55’ model, the fact is that at a motorway cruise you’re going to be lucky if you see 250 miles. The good news is that the Q8 e-tron charges up quickly — at up to 270kW from a high-power DC charging point — but the bad news is that you’re going to be doing that a lot.

On a twisty road

When it comes to a British B-road, the Audi Q8 e-tron Sportback is far more cruiser than bruiser. Yes, it has quattro four-wheel drive, plenty of power (even the basic ’50’ version is packing a more than adequate 340hp), and adaptive air suspension with a Dynamic driving mode, but the fact is that it weighs 2.5-tonnes and that weight has consequences.

The good news is that, just as with driving around town, the weight and the air springs do a great job of soaking up the, ahem, ‘traditional’ British road surfaces, but the bad news is that the weight just smothers any fun you might be having. The electric motors give plenty of thrust to get up and out of corners, and the Q8 e-tron Sportback always feels stable and planted, but it’s also big, heavy, and feels a bit weighed down by itself.

In theory, the Sportback body should be a bit lighter, and stiffer, than the conventional tall-roofed Q8 e-tron, but you’ll never really feel that effect from behind the wheel.

In spite of the Sportback badge, the Q8 e-tron is pretty spacious, even if it ultimately holds less than the standard model

The Audi Q8 e-tron Sportback might have a chopped-down roofline, but that doesn’t mean it’s not practical. In fact, in the front of the cabin, there’s noticeably more space for storing your keys, phones, wallets, purses and anything else you might be carrying than there is in the supposedly bigger Audi Q7 SUV.

There’s a massive storage area between the front seats, which includes cupholders and a vertical wireless phone charging pad into which you clip your phone, upright and out of the way. The door bins and glovebox are also well-sized and very useful. There’s ample legroom for the driver and front seat passenger, and the electric adjustment for both the seats and steering wheel make it easy to find an ideal driving position.

Space in the back seats

In the back of the Audi Q8 e-tron Sportback, there’s more room than you’d think. The rear floor isn’t completely flat, but the good news is that if you’re sitting in the back, your knees don’t jut up as high as they do in some other EVs, and the seat is nicely supportive. Legroom is fine, and even though there’s that sloping rear roof, headroom won’t be a problem in the back unless you’re very, very tall. Storage space is good too, with decent door bins and seatback pockets, and there are handy USB charging sockets. The centre rear seat is a little tall and narrow, but you can just about squeeze three adults in the back.

Boot space

Amazingly, given that sleek rear styling, the Audi Q8 e-tron Sportback doesn’t only not lose much boot space relative to the taller Q8 e-tron, it actually has more space than most of alternatives. In fact, with 528 litres of boot volume up to the load cover, the Sportback is only down on the regular model by 31 litres, and it still manages to have more space in the boot than either the BMW iX and the Mercedes EQE SUV, which are both much more bulky in their designs. The Q8 e-tron Sportback has around 40 litres more space in the boot than a Polestar 3, and there’s an extra storage area in the nose (a frunk? A froot? You choose…) which holds 62 litres and where you can stash your charging cables.

The rear seats split-fold in 40:20:40 formation and the boot floor is almost entirely flat once they’re folded down. It’s really only in seats-down mode that you lose out to the regular Q8 e-tron, as that can hold up to 1,637 litres of luggage, while the Sportback makes do with 1,567 litres.

The Audi Q8 e-tron’s cabin is gorgeous to look at, and just as well-made, but the tech isn’t as good as what you get in a Mercedes or BMW

As you’d expect from an Audi, the Q8 e-tron Sportback’s cabin has lavish quality levels, and excellent comfort. There’s leather and aluminium almost everywhere, and high-quality plastics where the leather and aluminium don’t reach. The stacked twin touchscreens on the centre of the dashboard — 10.1-inch upper, 8.6-inch lower — look slick and are fairly easy to use.

It helps that Audi has kept some physical buttons, but the lower screen, which looks after the climate controls, can be annoyingly fiddly, and the haptic ‘click’ that simulates a button press can sometimes make you think you’ve successfully activated a function when actually your finger has missed the target. At least there’s wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, and the digital instrument panel and optional head-up display are excellent.

Elsewhere, the front seats are excellent, and they get standard heating for chilly days. The gloss black ‘piano’ trim is a bit of a nightmare though — it’s a magnet for fingerprints and smudges, and scratches easily. We love the gear selector though, which is a chunky item that seems to have been lifted from an Airbus.

While it’s all beautifully built, though, the Q8 e-tron Sportback’s cabin could do with a bit more lively design to it. The screens are actually looking a bit old-hat compared to what you get in a BMW or Mercedes, while the overall design looks a bit cold and hard-edged, and isn’t as welcoming as the softer-looking interior of the Polestar 3.

It’s equally annoying that in an expensive car such as this, you still have to pay extra for an automated parking assistant, or for upgraded safety features such as adaptive cruise control.

Audi officially quotes energy efficiency of 2.8-to-3.0 miles per kWh for the Q8 e-tron Sportback 50 model, giving a range of up to 292 miles on one charge of its 89kWh battery. Even that seems a bit optimistic though, as in real-world conditions you’ll be doing exceptionally well to hit the 250 mile mark, and very often your range will be as little as 200 miles, especially if you’re spending any time on the motorway.

The bigger battery 55 model fares little better, even though it has a claimed range of 333 miles. Again, 250 miles is more likely here, the extra battery capacity offset by the car’s higher weight figure. At least the Q8 e-tron Sportback is tax-efficient — at the moment, you’ll pay no tax at all, although from April 2025, you’ll have to pay the standard £190 rate, plus a £410 surcharge because the Q8 e-tron Sportback costs more than £40,000. If you’re getting a Q8 e-tron Sportback as a company car, BIK tax costs start from as little as £24 per month.

Euro NCAP, the independent vehicle safety experts, tested the Q8 e-tron Sportback way back in 2019 when it was still the e-tron quattro. Even so, the rating is still valid and the car scored a maximum five stars out of five, with a 91 per cent adult occupant protection rating, 85 per cent for child occupants, 71 per cent for vulnerable road users, and 76 per cent for electronic safety systems.

While the NCAP test has evolved since, so too has the Q8 e-tron’s safety package, so it’s unquestionably still a very safe car. It does come with a standard alarm and immobiliser, but we’d recommend a tracking device too, as high-end vehicles such as this are frequently targeted.

The Q8 e-tron Sportback may have had a name change, but under the skin it’s still the same e-tron quattro as before, and that’s bad news on the reliability front. Audi has had to recall the car a number of times, for issues with water getting into the battery — a major potential fire hazard — as well as problems with the software, the car’s GPS sensors, and problems with the connectors for the battery charging system. Water getting into the electrical system is also an issue, while issues with brakes and suspension triggered yet more recalls.

There weren’t enough responses from Q8 e-tron Sportback owners for it to appear in the Auto Express Driver Power Top 50 Cars To Own list, but Audi itself posted a surprisingly poor result, coming 27th out of 32 brands, with 21 per cent of owners reporting problems with their cars.