Extreme machine
No half measures with the latest version of Audi’s big electric SUV.
Nothing is more likely to get a reader swiping left than a big electric SUV from play-it-safe Audi. But you’d be wrong, dear readers: the following months are going to be box oce. Pretty much everything about this SQ8 e-Tron (formerly known as the e-Tron S) is extreme: extremely good or infuriatingly bad. Let me explain.
The e-Tron was Audi’s first EV, launched in 2019, and the 2020 S version packed a big 95kWh battery and a puny 223mile range. Audi has subsequently re-engineered the car’s battery, chassis and looks, and stuck on the Q8 badge to telegraph things have changed.
The battery in the base £69,285 Q8 e-Tron 50 has jumped to 89kWh from the original e-Tron’s 64.7kWh, because its sub-200-mile real-world range was insucient. The WLTP-ratified range is now 305 miles. Also, Audi has boosted its DC public charging capability to 150kW.
Another £10k upgrades you to the 55 model, with an extra 50kW (67bhp) across its twin motors, 170kW max charging and a colossal 106kWh battery. The same powerpack feeds the flagship SQ8 (from £97,385). This Black Edition’s ocial WLTP range is 269 miles, which looks a little undernourished when the four-wheel-drive Kia EV9 offers 313 miles and a Tesla Model Y Long Range 331. More miles from smaller batteries requiring less resources.
The SQ8’s bigger battery takes up the same space but yields more energy density thanks to revised chemistry and prismatic batteries, which replace less space-ecient pouch-shaped cells. A new battery management system with indirect cooling aims to keep the cells at the optimum temperature to sustain range and fast charging. While 170kW doesn’t look that impressive a DC figure, Audi reckons the SQ8 can sustain a good refuelling curve – we’ll see.
The good news is that the SQ8 can get impressively close to its ocial consumption figure on motorway cruises. The bad news is that figure is a deeply unimpressive 2.2 miles per kWh, way off the 3.5 miles you can now expect from an efficient electric car. The SQ8 is hampered by its stature: it weighs 2650kg unladen and measures almost five metres long with a height similar to an Audi Q5’s.
Imagine how bad it would be without Audi’s mitigations: air suspension that lowers the
body by 26mm at speed, a more aerodynamic underfloor, active radiator closing and so on.
This car also features Audi’s virtual door mirrors, cameras that relay the side view to monitors in the door trim. On the original e-Tron’s launch, Audi said the lower-drag camera stalks improved range by up to 3.7 miles and cut wind noise.
They cost £1750, or £2875 if you include the City Assist pack which adds blind-spot and rear trac monitoring and automated parking features.
On poorly lit roads the cameras make gauging the distance of following trac tricky, and parking is a nightmare. The 2D view makes it nigh on impossible to judge depth and they mask the car’s extremities. The first time I tried multi-storey parking – with my father-in-law on board, who values high driving standards – I ended up at 60˚ across the space.
He approves of the Audi dynamically, however. Total power is 496bhp and in boost mode the SQ8 warps to 62mph in 4.5 seconds. Three motors hustle it along: there’s 124kW up front and two 98kW units spinning a rear wheel each.
Some very clever torque vectoring pivots the car into corners, while the new steering rack is pleasingly direct and nicely weighted. Throw in a taut but compliant suspension and the SQ8 is quiet, quick and surprisingly agile.
The diamond-cut 21-inch Y-spoke alloys are standard but our car has optional metallic paint (£795), the Tech pack, which brings illumination to the Audi logo on the grille, plus a glass roof and heated rear seats for £2595, and the £1995 Tour pack including adaptive cruise control with lane assist, anti-collision monitoring and predictive eciency assist.
So that’s the SQ8 e-Tron. Where will the extreme machine rank alongside previous e-SUV long-term test cars: the Jaguar i-Pace, Mercedes EQC and BMW iX? We’ll find out…
The SQ8 can get impressively close to its o cial consumption figure. Pity it’s such a low figure…