Audi Q8 e-tron Review & Prices

The Audi Q8 e-tron is a large electric SUV with an upmarket image and plenty of tech. Although it has a new name and a fresh look, it’s actually a mid-life update for the e-tron SUV that was launched in 2018.

With pricey alternatives like the BMW iX, Mercedes EQS SUV, Lotus Eletre, Polestar 3 and Volvo EX90, the Audi Q8 e-tron is hoping to be noticed in a market of stand-out options – like Nokia making a smartphone to go up against Apple, Google and Samsung.

In this mid-generation upgrade, the Q8 e-tron has got a new front design that’s more aggressive than before, with a new grille the most noticeable change. You can get cameras instead of wing mirrors, while the rear has also been made slightly more sporty as well.

The cabin hasn’t been tweaked quite as much as the outside, but you get three screens, plush materials and comfy seats as standard. You can choose sportier features if you want to make this plush SUV feel more dynamic.

You get a lot of storage space inside, while you’ll have plenty of room to get comfortable in the front and back. If you need lots of passenger space, though, the Volvo EX90 and Mercedes EQS SUV may be better for you - unlike those cars, the Q8 e-tron only comes as a five-seater.

The 569-litre boot in the Q8 e-tron is larger than the one in the BMW iX, but the Volvo EX90 and Mercedes EQS SUV are considerably bigger in their five-seat configurations. Folding the seats down gives you a large, flat space to store things, while there's a space under the bonnet to store your charging cables.

You get the choice of two batteries and both come with dual-motor all-wheel drive. The smaller pack is in the car labelled ‘50’, while the ‘55’ has a bigger battery with a range of up to 333 miles on a full charge.

Driving around town, the Q8 e-tron does feel quite bulky measuring almost five metres long and two metres wide, while the advanced wing cameras that give you the view down each side aren’t as effective as a traditional mirror. The steering is fairly light though, while the rest of the visibility around you is great.

Take the Q8 e-tron onto the motorway and it’s one of the most composed EVs around. The standard air suspension soaks up the bumps brilliantly, while exterior noise is suppressed very well. Acceleration is also very smooth.

When you’re on a twisty road, you’ll certainly get a sense of the Q8 e-tron’s heavy weight and you’ll find it’s a much better experience if you drive it smoothly rather than try to chuck it about like a sports car. It has enough punch if you want to be more spirited and it’ll get up to speed swiftly when accelerating out of corners.

The Audi Q8 e-tron is the sportiest-looking SUV among its alternatives and is supremely comfy to drive, but there’s more excitement and luxury offered with other electric SUVs.

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With the Mercedes EQS SUV, Volvo EX90 and Lotus Eletre all costing more than the Audi Q8 e-tron, you could say it’s a bit of a bargain. The Audi isn’t quite as premium-feeling as the Mercedes or Volvo, nor as spacious though.

The closest comparison is the BMW iX, which is much bolder inside and out, but the Audi is more practical in the boot.

The Q8 e-tron is comfortable and composed, but there’s no one-pedal driving mode for the city

In town

Even though the Q8 e-tron is rather large and can feel quite bulky, it works well in town. You can adjust the brake regeneration with the paddles behind the steering wheel to offer more or less depending on the scenario, but there’s no specific driving mode that will give you one-pedal driving – something that would make town driving even easier.

The steering is well-weighted – not the lightest, but good enough to make manoeuvring and parking easy enough. The e-tron gets a rear-view camera as standard with all-round sensors to help with getting around car parks and into spaces, but Vorsprung and Launch Edition models come with cameras instead of wing mirrors.

Those cameras can be a bit disconcerting and even once you get used to them, aren’t as easy nor useful as traditional mirrors. You also don’t get a good sense of depth with cameras and the display screens are mounted lower than wing mirrors, which also takes your eyes off the road ahead more than with standard wing mirrors.

Audi’s electric motors are usually pretty punchy and in the Q8 e-tron they work wonderfully. In the 55 version, where you get 408hp, it pulls away from junctions really nicely and it’s super responsive so you get up to speed quickly.

The standard air suspension is very comfortable as well, soaking up the larger bumps and cracks in the road excellently.

On the motorway

While the electric motors are less efficient when you’re driving at motorway speeds, the Q8 e-tron is a superb cruiser.

There’s plenty of insulation to prevent road and wind noise intruding into the cabin. That makes for a wonderfully comfortable experience on the motorway, with the motors getting you up to pace with little trouble.

You can get adaptive cruise control to make long drives even easier, but even without it, the standard cruise control takes a lot of strain out of driving.

The camera feed screens do help by having blind spot monitoring indicators around the edge and can be more useful at night – but the view is just as impractical as it is in town.

On a twisty road

If you want the sportier version of the Q8 e-tron, you’ll need to go for the SQ8 – which gets a third motor for plenty of extra punch. But you still have more than enough with the regular Q8 model.

Planting the throttle out of corners comes with more than enough acceleration for most, and engaging ‘Dynamic’ mode improves the responsiveness even further. It also adds weight to the steering, making it feel sportier.

But we’d say the Q8 e-tron is much better suited as a cruiser. It soaks up the sharper UK B-road bumps excellently, with only the harshest tarmac unsettling the car. But that won’t happen often.

There’s not a lot of body roll when you corner quickly, but passengers will notice it. The batteries thankfully weigh the car down enough though so keep it stable.

You have a lot of space in the cabin to keep your family happy, but the boot space is smaller than alternatives

In the cabin of the Q8 e-tron, you’ll find plenty of storage spots to keep things contained. The door bins have loads of room, while there’s a good space in the centre console and under the armrest. The glove box is rather sizeable too.

Being the largest Audi SUV on sale, you get plenty of adjustment in your seating position, which still leaves lots of room for the people in the second row. You have electric adjustment for both the seat and steering column to make it easy to change things up quickly.

Space in the back seats

You get a lot of room for your legs and feet behind the front row, while you get a good amount of under thigh support. The middle seat is a little higher, but you’ll still have plenty of headroom and three adults can sit across the back fairly easily.

You’ll have a good amount of storage in the rear. Mid-sized doorbins and pockets on the seat backs give you more than enough to keep people happy, while there are charging ports to charge up your devices.

Boot space

The Q8 e-tron has a well-sized boot that has a practical shape and is better than some of its alternatives. The 569-litre boot is better than the BMW iX’s 500 litres, but in its five-seat layout the Mercedes EQS SUV has 880 litres, while the Volvo EX90 has 1,010 litres to work with. Both of those are much more expensive though.

You’ll find useful nets and pockets at the side, while there are hooks to hang things off. You’ll also find some underfloor space to store things and a place under the bonnet – a froot – to keep your charging cables that have a specific bag for that area.

Folding the rear seats down gives you an awful lot of space to use. The 1,637-litre area is flat and it’s easy to slide things forward, while there’s no load lip to drop things over.

The cabin is well-equipped and has plenty of space, but it’s not the most exciting to be in

Inside the Q8 e-tron, you’ll find a cabin that’s got plenty of premium materials and lots of quality equipment – all contributing to the high-end price. Leather and aluminium are used to trim the surfaces, while there are three large displays including two touchscreens.

It all feels excellent and you get heated comfort seats in the front to make the experience even nicer in the winter. There are also grey surfaces and gloss black trim, although the latter can easily get smudged and scratched.

Compare it to a Mercedes EQS SUV and a BMW iX though, and the interior doesn’t feel quite as interesting, as there are lots of black and grey areas in the Audi. Ambient lighting does add a splash of colour, but it’s not as nice or modern as the iX’s.

The screens are clear and easy to use, with the 10.1-inch touchscreen at the top controlling the main infotainment functions, while the lower 8.6-inch screen is used to control the air conditioning as well as shortcuts to other parts of the software. The third screen sits behind the steering wheel and displays driving information.

The infotainment is one of the nicer systems you can use, alongside BMW and Mercedes, but you can use Apple CarPlay and Android Auto wirelessly if you prefer.

You can fit all the trimmings on your Q8 e-tron. Those include a technology pack – which includes a head-up display, a Bang & Olufsen sound system and advanced parking assist – and the tour pack that adds adaptive cruise control and predictive efficiency assist.

You get the choice of two batteries to pair to the dual-motor all-wheel drive – either the 50 or 55. The 50-labelled model gets an 89kWh pack that can take you up to 283 miles on a full charge, while the 55 e-tron has a 106kWh battery that allows up to 333 miles of range.

The 50 can charge at up to 150kW on a DC current, meaning you can go from 10-80% in just 28 minutes. For the 55, you get some extra charging speed up to 170kW on a fast charger, which means the larger battery can be replenished from 10-80% in 31 minutes.

Both can charge at 11kW on AC as standard, while you can optionally add 22kW AC charging to make those slower charges even faster. On a typical home wallbox, the top-end 55 e-tron takes 18 hours to charge up from empty – so not even an overnight stop can fill the battery up. It still takes an overnight charge for the 50 e-tron on a wallbox.

As an electric vehicle, you don’t need to pay road tax for emissions, but because it costs over £40,000, you will need to pay a charge from the second to the sixth year of ownership. Company car drivers will be happy though, as Benefit in Kind rates for electric cars are much lower than other options.

Tested back in 2019 as the e-tron, the Q8 e-tron has a five-star safety rating from Euro NCAP. Passenger protection tests gave the e-tron the best scores, but it still performed well in the vulnerable road users and safety assists.

As standard, you get front and rear parking sensors with a reversing camera, lane departure warning, traffic sign recognition, emergency braking with front detection and cruise control. You can add optional packs that include even more kit, like adaptive cruise control and cross traffic assist.

You’ll also get airbags throughout, ISOFIX points on the front passenger seat and outer rear seats, an active vehicle alerting system and an anti-theft alarm.

Since its launch in 2019, the e-tron has had quite a few issues, such as problems with the rear axle, brakes and water leaking into the battery, so if you’re looking for a used version, you need to make sure those have been rectified.

As standard, you get a three-year/60,000-mile warranty, but you can buy additional years up to five years and 90,000 miles. You can also add an extended warranty to cover yourself even longer.