Audi
MUNICH—The sedan isn’t quite dead, at least not yet. While it’s true that car buyers are voting with their wallets and opting for crossovers and SUVs, not every automaker has given up on the form factor, even when it comes to electric vehicles. Audi’s next EV, for example, will be the new A6 e-tron, which goes on sale in the U.S. next year.
Peasants might quibble that the A6 e-tron is a sedan, because the one we get here is a mid-size five-door, which means it has a tailgate rather than a trunk. In Audi jargon, that translates to an A6 Sportback e-tron, with more of a two-box rather than the three-box shape of the outgoing (combustion engine-powered) A6. Not that that’s a bad thing in our eyes: the tailgate makes it easier to load larger items (like a bike) into or out of the boot.
“We were determined to give the A6 e-tron the appealing proportions of the concept car,” says Audi designer Wolf Seebers. “I'm talking about the classic Sportback silhouette that Audi fans know,” says Seebers.
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Five-door fastbacks are perhaps the best of both worlds.
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The A6 e-tron has remarkably low air resistance.
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the side of the A6 e-tron masks the height well.
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The S6 e-tron is the sportier version.
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Unfortunately, this beautiful fabric upholstery is also not available for American cars.
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The rear seat of the A6 e-tron offers ample legroom.
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The Audi logo on the back is illuminated.
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Side cameras reduce drag somewhat, but violate federal motor vehicle safety standards.
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As long as the car detects the key nearby, you can open the car with a foot movement.
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Here you see the luggage compartment in the rear.
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An electrochromic roof is an option.
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Achieving that silhouette wasn’t exactly easy. One reason automakers and their designers have moved away from sedans and toward electric vehicles is that it’s much easier to fit a block of lithium-ion batteries between the axles when you have the extra height of a crossover or SUV.
For the Porsche Taycan (and the Audi e-tron GT, built on the same J1 platform), this meant positioning the battery pack so that there were spaces for rear-seat passengers to put their feet. Translated from German, this means “foot stall.”
The 100 kWh battery (94.4 kWh usable) in the A6 e-tron doesn’t have any foot garages despite the lower floor, but sitting in the back I found enough space for my lower limbs as opposed to sitting so that my knees were level with my chest. That’s because the A6 e-tron is actually a little higher than Seebers and his colleagues would otherwise have liked. “We developed the inlay in the rocker panel to introduce a horizontal cut into the car, adding another segment to the side profile to visually compensate for the extra height,” he said.
It is a very smooth shape
Whether you like the shape or not, it’s hard not to be impressed by just how aerodynamically efficient it is. The drag coefficient is just 0.21, or at least it is if the A6 e-tron is equipped with side-view cameras. These aren’t legal on US roads, so they’re not offered here, and we don’t miss a thing – as with the original Audi e-tron, the placement of the screens isn’t ideal, and fitting conventional reflective glass side mirrors only increases the Cd to 0.22. And that’s with wheels ranging from 19 to 21 inches, no less.
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The US will get three versions of the A6 when it goes on sale next year in late spring or early summer. There’s a 362-hp (270 kW) rear-wheel-drive A6 Sportback e-tron, a 422-hp (315 kW) all-wheel-drive A6 Sportback e-tron quattro, and a 496-hp (370 kW) S6 Sportback e-tron, which is also all-wheel drive and can increase its output to 543 hp (405 kW) for short bursts using launch control.
Like the Q6 e-tron we recently drove (which is also built with PPE), the battery pack runs at 800V and is therefore capable of DC fast-charging at rates of up to 270kW, which should bring the pack from 10-80 percent state of charge in just 21 minutes. But we won’t have EPA range estimates until the car arrives here next year.
No Avant for America
What we likely won’t get here in the States is the A6 Avant e-tron, the wagon version. Audi has no plans to import either the A6 Avant e-tron or S6 Avant e-tron because when the Venn diagram of people who say they like wagons and people who buy new Audis intersects, the overlap is tiny. The automaker might be a little more willing to consider the idea once the RS6 e-tron arrives in a few years. Start your letter-writing campaign now if you want to see that happen.
Many of the other details in the A6 e-tron feel very similar to those in the Q6 e-tron . The cabin layout is very familiar, though you feel more enclosed in the car from the front seats than you do in the SUV. There’s the same “Digital Stage” – Audi’s name for the pair of screens that wrap around the driver – and an optional third screen for the front-seat passenger, which has an active privacy mode so the driver can’t see anything on that screen while the car is moving. The door panels are likely the biggest difference, Audi told us.
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The lights also look quite similar in concept (if not form) to the Q6 e-tron. There are LED daytime running lights up front, and the taillights are made up of ten OLED panels that have animations and can even display warning icons in other markets. (Like the side cameras, animated taillights are currently not allowed under federal vehicle safety regulations.)
US pricing, like EPA estimates, will be closer to the A6 e-tron's retail price.
