AUDI A6 AVANT E-TRON S LINE QUATTRO: POWERTRAIN 94.9kWh battery, single-speed transmission, dual electric motors, AWD OUTPUT 405kW/580Nm EFFICIENCY Range 623km (WLTP) SIZE 4928mm long, 2260kg PRICE $167,990.
That kinda goes double for EVs, which take platform-sharing as we know it and turn it up to 11. At the extreme, they really can be just "skateboards" of battery and motor-tech wearing different top hats.
The downside is that different EVs from one brand can feel… samey. The upside is… this, actually: the awesome-looking Audi A6 Avant e-tron.
It's an SUV world as we all know, and passenger cars can be a hard sell. Whether the Audi A6 e-tron would even exist without the VW Group's Premium Platform Electric (PPE) and two sister SUVs, the Audi Q6 and Porsche Macan, it's hard to say. But having populist siblings to provide these new-gen underpinnings sure did help.
It might surprise you to learn that the A6 Avant e-tron is actually more expensive than the equivalent Q6 e-tron. Our A6 is the middle S line quattro version at $167,990, which is $12k more expensive than the Q6 in the same trim. Or consider this: for another $2k you could have the SQ6 e-tron.
In the A6 Avant's defence, it's a bigger (by which we mean longer) car, although the Q6 still serves up an extra 24 litres boot space (526l) thanks to the roof height.
The A6 e-tron is great at switching between being luxury transport and an astonishingly rapid A-to-B express.
So you're probably not buying the A6 e-tron based on the numbers. You're buying it because it looks cool and, let's face it, because it's not an SUV. We're okay with that.
Despite being "only" an A6, this e-tron is plenty fast enough with 340kW (maximum in launch mode) and 275Nm/580Nm front/rear. It'll rocket to 100km/h in 4.7 seconds, which is only 0.6sec slower than the max-attack S6 e-tron.
But does it feel the same as the Q6 e-tron? Pretty much, yes. Which is no bad thing because the Q6 is a great drive anyway. You're not getting a huge advantage in centre-of-gravity by being so much lower, because all the weight (battery weight, that is) is down the bottom in either car, anyway. But by sitting nice and low it just feels sportier.
The A6 has a slightly longer wheelbase (by 57mm), so it stands to reason it'll ride a little better, but be a snip less agile in tight turns. But when we're talking 2.3-tonne-plus EVs, there's not a huge amount in it.
Thanks to adaptive air suspension and drive modes that do feel quite different as you cycle through them, the A6 e-tron is great at switching between being luxury transport and an astonishingly rapid A-to-B express.