The Q6 E-Tron Is Audi’s Most Important Electric Car Yet!
We’re here at a top secret studio somewhere in Germany to show you something which many of our viewers May deem slightly controversial and that’s because we spend our lives telling you to drive smaller cheaper more affordable electric vehicles and this arguably is the antithesis of that but as we enter
Mainstream adoption of electric vehicles we know that there is an appetite for cars that are just cars that people love to drive drive and far surpass their petrol or diesel counterparts maybe that’s what we have here that’s the Audi q6 rron and this is the fully charged
Show like fully charged then you’ll love our fun-packed everything electric Expos around the world next up we’re in London and Harriet remember energy and transport professionals Go free on the first Day so know what you’re thinking Audi have been on this electrification journey for a little while now we’ve seen the Q4 rron the Q8 rron we went and saw the Audi rron GT actually in the Wind Tunnel here in Germany and you can watch that episode highly recommend it
So what so special about this why on Earth should we be excited about the q6 well it all lies in bespoke architecture and this is the first vehicle for Audi which sits on the PPE the premium platform electric which is also what underpins uh the new Porsche Mancan
EV and because it’s on that bespoke architecture that unlock blcks a couple of really really cool things and that’s what I’m going to try and do my best to show you today but let’s first of all start with the design of this thing and I want to start by talking
About this Grill because of course that’s not a grill it’s not doing anything but it does speak to that kind of original Audi design language and certainly if you were considering a new car and you were thinking hm do we go for a Q5 or do we go for an electric q6
Actually it does give you that familiar ity and you know perhaps it makes that transition to electric vehicles that tiny little bit less daunting when I look at this I’m like hm what kind of personality does this car have from the front and I think it has a bit of a
Combined personality because sometimes it looks a little bit severe but there is a component of this that is a little bit cheeky which I have to say I really like and part of that is achieved by these incredible headlights and they’re incredible because you can program these to do whatever you want
They could wink they could have a particular profile so you can adapt this depending on your mood say it’s a very very congested and busy traffic day you could you could have a slightly more severe headlight or if you’re feeling pretty light and Lively perhaps going on
A road trip you could have something that’s a bit more cheery now typically when you look at vehicles in any kind of review you kind of see them at that sort of front three quter View and I deliberately didn’t want to do that because we started at the front and it
Looks quite imposing it looks quite traditional in terms of its SUV and then when you come to the side hello teeny tiny overhangs there is absolutely nothing there that is such a tiny overhang and it means that the wheels can go right to the corners go right to
The edges which of course helps with sort of handling and steering and all that kind of thing but means that you can get so much from the wheelbase so in terms of overall dimensions this vehicle is 4.77 m in total length to give you an idea that’s very similar to the model y
The e 6 the onic 5 the Mercedes eqc but wheelbase that’s where things get very exciting because the wheelbase is 3.88 9 M that’s I think 80 mm longer than the Q5 and that’s all because everything can be pushed right to the outer edges and really maximizing the experience that
You would get for the occupants inside the vehicle in terms of the exterior shape of this I really do believe that this has been incredibly well executed there is something that is at the same time very taught very sort of structural and quite Dynamic and also something
Very fluid about it it sort of reminds me of a professional tennis player very elegant and yet very strong and I think really enabled by again these very structural components that you see here um and of course with the sort of tapering roof line as well but actually
The real Beauty in my opinion is what sits within the platform now for those who have been watching or following the q6 rron journey for a little while will know that this is a little bit late and that’s all been because there’s been so much attention going into developing
That PP platform and making it absolutely perfect and I think the proof is in the pudding there are so many stats here that really point to the fact that they’re focusing on making this Driving Experience incredibly fun incredibly efficient so of a couple of things to tell you there is an
Asynchronous motor at the front a permanent magnet motor at the back asynchronous means no raree Metals really nice to kind of reduce that impact but also both those Motors they take up 30% less space they’re 20% lighter there’s 20% more power density there’s so much more that you get from
Those from those Motors um and not least also we’ve got silicon carbide inverters the steering has been made completely new so all of that goes into making you know we’re not just talking about batteries anymore in terms of efficiency we’re talking about that entire powertrain that it becomes more
Efficient and way more fun of course we’ll be able to confirm those things when we actually get behind the wheel and take this out on the road We have come into the interior and I think what’s really interesting is that from an exterior perspective you know we’ve said things like it’s very fluid it’s very strong it’s got Tor lines and how do you create something on the interior that feels soft and homely but also doesn’t feel totally disconnected
From the exterior and I think that’s what they managed to nail pretty well here we’ve got really really kind of structural lines that very much mirror what’s going on outside but at the same time there is a softness to them it does have that very lovely homely feel and
Even these materials feel like materials I genuinely like a sofa made out of it’s it’s it’s nice it’s fancy but I think the thing that is is most notable is this digital stage socaled and you’ll notice immediately that it’s on a curve that isn’t gimmicky at all because if
You consider driving in your driving position I’ve got my uh seat where I drive normally when you have quite a large flat screen the most right hand button feels very far away and you do have to do a little shift in order to reach it but if you’ve got it curved
It’s so much easier to reach that feels so well thought out with regards to ergonomics anyone who has had a vdu vehicle an Audi vehicle will have known the horrors that they’ve had of time gone past with the HM and we will be relieved to know that this is an Android
Auto OS system they have said no you take over you know what you’re doing when it comes to software you do it and they have and it looks pretty good it is pretty responsive it certainly looks pretty neat and if you’re not a fan of that then of course you can have Apple
Carplay or Android auto there’s another thing that I think is worth pointing out here one is that there is a screen for the passenger and it’s designed such that really when you’re the driver you cannot see what’s going on there so they are able to have their own entertainment
Uh when you’re driving on a long journey personally I think that’s a bit antisocial I’d be pretty pretty peeved if my passenger was uh watching a film whil I was driving but you know each to their own there is also this light bar which isn’t just from a design
Perspective but actually it is totally interactive and helps give you information at your eyeline so for example at the moment you can see that it’s blue if I was going to pull out to the right and there was a cyclist there it would flash red in that corner and it
Just helps you to have all of those kind of gentle visual cues in your eyeline rather than sort of flashing and blaring at you in these screens here so again some some just really nice wellth thought out uh design features and the same is true that you know whilst that’s
Hazard detection and all that kind of thing it also will show show you um charging status we haven’t spoken about price yet and the price of this will start at £ 68795 when it comes to the UK later this Summer that isn’t insubstantial and particularly when you consider that you
Can get a model y an onic 5 and ev6 for less than that and above it you can get the BMW the Mercedes the Porsche McAn EV it does sort of sit squarely between those two brackets but if I compare this to say the arguably slightly more utilitarian certainly comparatively
Model y this feels premium it gives you that taste of Premium feel it is that car for people who like their car cars back seat test and I would say I’m exceedingly impressed I’ve moved the seat back to a much more exaggerated driving position because I’m 5 at three
When it’s in my driving position it’s just not representative of what the average person will experience so that front seat is right the way back and we are really experiencing the benefit of that enormous and very very long wheel base because as you can see there is no
Risk of me banging any knees whatsoever there I’ve got so much room above me I’m sure Jack who’s 6’5 he would be absolutely fine in fact he would be laughing back here we’ve got a lovely armrest with two additional cup holders we can adapt seats and heated seats
There this feels really really nice and certainly will set you up very very well for a long car Journey coming around to the rear we have the similar opportunity for personalization with programming these LED lights I do think that’s really cool I’m sure many people will think that’s slightly
Gimmicky but I don’t know I think it’s really playful in a car that ultimately looks quite serious it has this lovely Light Beam we’ve seen that before I personally love it I think it’s very demure actually um but what have we got in terms of boot space well a whopping
526 L uh just a little over, 1529 with the seats folded down and of course a oh oh there we go I was just that was me user error not car error there is a hidden floor now one of the things I think is quite cool about this and of
Course in there you’ve got your charging cable is that sometimes you see the false floor occupies the entire bit of the boot and that means that you have to take stuff out in order to be able to access it this is sort of a split so you
Could push your stuff to the back and then still be able to open that so just a nice kind of you know consideration to usability there’s 2.4 tons of towing capacity so if you’ve got one of these of course you’ve probably got a boat uh so you can tell your boat put your
Golden retriever in the back lovely we can all aspire to that this sits on an 800 volt architecture and to understand why that’s significant think about your high school physics and P equals IV or power equals current times voltage so the higher the voltage the lower the
Current for the same power and that means that you get fewer losses you can have smaller cables it means less copper ultimately making this much more efficient and much lighter so when you can charge at a DC compatible charging station you can get up to 270 KW
Charging the battery from 10 to 80% in 21 minutes or in other words adding 260 km in just 10 minutes now given the fact that this is very much targeted at young families albeit affluent young families that is the difference on a sort of long road trip between full meltdown tantrums
And a very lovely and cohesive onward Journey however not all charging stations are compatible with 800 volt architectures and in that instance this basically splits into two 400v systems which it can charge in parallel up to 150 KW the net effect I should say of an 800 volt architecture is that you can
Get much much more power and in fact this one this is the that goes up to 285 KW there is the um SQ version which goes up to 380 KW super super powerful vehicles um I should say with that kind of power we’re talking not to 62 or not
To 100 km an hour between 4.3 and 5.9 seconds depending on which spec that you get let’s talk about the battery it’s big it’s rivan r1s BMW iix kind of big it’s 100 kilowatt hours which of course if we’re talking that big then it’s an MC uh nickel manganese Cobalt and not
Lfp because it is slightly more energy dense but I’m told that the team have managed to get it 30% more energy dense than its rron predecessors which is definitely really really cool now of course nmc it’s slightly more tricky than lfp with regards to Thermal stability so there are a ton of battery
Management systems and cooling systems and all of that jazz what does that mean for range well 385 Mi or 6 20 km so definitely absolutely Bonkers big that means this car really is for someone who is doing those very very long miles perhaps someone has a very very long
Commute or is frequently traveling Away there are so many more things that I could tell you about this car but I do think it’s best left for when we get to actually drive it and to put them to the test but what’s left to say well I think this is is a real remarkable feat of
Engineering and it’s not just going to be class leading for an EV it’s going to be class leading and in that respect maybe this is the car that makes it very hard to hate EVS
The Audi Q6 E-tron is quite possibly the first electric vehicle from Audi that has made us stop in our tracks and take notice as, whilst Audi aren’t new to the world of Electric Vehicles, this is the first one they’ve put on a brand spanking new EV platform – the PPE (Premium Platform Electric). Why is that exciting, we hear you cry?! Bespoke EV architecture means, not only a firm commitment to developing EVs, but it unlocks the scope to include a plethora of super exciting technologies and fit for purpose, thoughtful user experience design. Imogen tried not to swoon too hard at the 800V architecture, 270KW Charging, 220 KW of Regen braking, reduction in rare earth metals, the substantial space and weight saving in the motor and batteries, or the 625Km range.. You can be the judge of whether or not she succeeded! @everythingelectricshow @fullychargedshow
00:00 Introduction: A bit controversial
00:57 What’s so special about this?
01:38 Exterior
04:21 It’s all about the platform…
05:36 Interior
08:20 Price
09:01 Backseat Test
10:03 Boot Space
11:21 800V Architecture, Charging Speed & 0-60
12:50 Battery & Range
13:48 Concluding thoughts
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