Audi A6 Sportback e-Tron - long-term review

Regular readers will remember that I ran a BMW i5 Touring last year. You’ll also recall that (despite my EV skepticism) I rather liked it - and even went as far as to say that BMW currently make the best EVs. The new BMW iX3, which won TG’s most recent Car of the Year Award, proves my theory isn’t a one-hit wonder. 

So, enter Top Gear Garage’s all-electric Audi A6 Sportback e-tron. Another big, German, executive electric car. It’s here to try and wrestle away those award-winning laurels from BMW, and see if a different approach to electric car building can be just as satisfying to live with.

See, whereas the BMW i5 is a 5 Series with battery power (the same shell is also available with combustion power) the A6 e-tron is a bespoke EV. You can buy a combustion A6, but it’s completely unrelated.

Meanwhile, what does  'Sportback'  mean? It means it’s not an estate, but it does have a rear hatchback. And it’s slippery. In fact, this is Audi’s most aerodynamically efficient car… ever. Assuming you ticked the box for the fancy camera mirrors. 

We didn’t. Quite frankly, they’re terrible. We’ll happily forgo a bit of efficiency in exchange for not feeling sick and being able to reverse in the dark, and we don’t need a six-month test to tell you that. 

All of this slipperiness means that in base form, from a single motor producing 322bhp and a 75.8kWh battery, you get a WLTP range of 383 miles. Opt for the Avant and that drops to 361 miles.

As this being Top Gear, we’ve also gone for the quicker  'Performance ' pack (yes, that’s actually what it’s called). This brings the larger 94.9kWh battery rather than the 75.8kWh unit, and a claimed range of 463 miles. I’ll eat The Stig’s helmet if I get anywhere near that, especially at this time of year.

While grey may be the most popular colour of 2025 - and very much in keeping with Audi’s stunning new F1 car livery - we’ve ignored the statistics and gone for Malpelo Blue metallic (£775, which is… interesting. In a  Changing Rooms kind of way).  

We’ve also gone for the Bang and Olufsen sound and vision system at £2,895. Money well spent? I immediately had to explain to my teenage son who Bang and Olufsen are. More importantly I told him to concentrate on keeping the white interior clean.

There’s much to get our teeth into here. Is Audi’s ‘Sportback’ compromise spacious and versatile enough to stop us yearning for the wagon, while enjoying the range benefits? Does this all-new A6 carry the exec express baton which the Audi 100 started? And what does living with one of the world’s most aerodynamic cars mean in the real world? Proper running cost savings? Less wind noise as I cruise up and down the A1? Will it never need washing?

There’s much at stake here. Audi was the last of the big three German brands to properly commit to an electric family of cars, and the e-trons proper have arrived into a world that – like me – is no longer convinced EVs are the future. Pass me my Bluetooth earpiece and get out of the overtaking lane. I’m a man on a mission…