Audi S6 e-tron Avant review – BMW’s i5 Touring has a rival on its hands
Audi’s new electric S6 has lots going for it, but its lack of range and high price will be its undoing.
As you start reading this review of Audi’s new £99,300 (no, that price isn’t a typo) BMW i5-rivalling S6 e-tron Avant please bear in mind its name might change before you finish it. This is because Audi is having a bit of an internal argument with itself over how it names its cars, including a reset on the eve of the S6’s UK launch.
What started with switching engine capacity naming conventions to meaningless 35, 45 and 55 tags, Audi went a step further with the introduction of its e-tron electric cars and declared its battery-powered models would have an even-numbered name – A4, A6, Q4, Q6 etc, etc – and those with an internal combustion engine would use an odd number in their names – A5, A7 etc, etc.
Then Audi’s naming department pointed out that consumers like simple things to remain just that, so it's now back to square one: Audi’s executive saloon, regardless of the powertrain fitted to it, is to be called the A6. What this means for the A7 nameplate – which was to be used for the new internal combustion engine replacements for the new A6 – is anyone’s guess.
Available as a saloon-come-sportback or Avant, the new S6 is a good car. It rides well and is therefore comfortable to spend large amounts of time in. It has a higher level of refinement than you might expect, closer to an A8 than the outgoing A6 but… it’s not a car that can carry its six-figure price figure price tag. Not by a long shot.
More reviews
The good stuff is good, some of it very good. With Audi going back to its design roots by focusing on aerodynamic efficiency, this is the slipperiest car it has ever made, with the most efficient A6 saloon having a 0.21 coefficient of drag, the Avant 0.24. The good news is, in achieving this Audi hasn’t resorted to a design with AI generated generic looks. It’s clearly an Audi to look at and doesn’t follow others (Mercedes) who feel the need to throw away decades of design iconography to make their EVs look as different as possible to their ICE models.
Based on the same PPE platform that underpins the new Porsche Macan EV and the Audi Q6 e-tron means the S6 requires a bulky piece of black trim along its body’s sill to visually lower it and mask its SUV underpinnings. This aside, if you're an Audi Avant fan the S6 cuts that same subtle, assured style of its predecessors. It’s not the most adventurous of looks, but crucially it’s what customers in this sector look for. Spec it in a dark blue or grey and you’ll blend in as you make progress.
It’s a similar story inside, where the architecture and design feels more modern and an update of a conventional car’s interior rather than a redesign for the sake of it just because it’s an EV. Yes, there are two screens that are home to all the core functions, but the instrument binnacle is an overhaul of what has gone before with clearly presented instruments where you’d expect them. Someone has clearly thought about functionality and how a car's interior is used by its occupants, just as they did at BMW with the i5 and didn’t at Mercedes with the EQS.
Yes the air-conditioning controls are within the second screen, but there are simple shortcut ‘keys’ for those regular functions, including one to turn off the speed limit warning. Lane keep assist has its own button at the end of the indicator stalk, as it was in the outgoing A6, which must have sent the tech nerds into a tailspin when their suggestions of putting it on sub-menu five was vetoed. That it’s not shouting about being powered by a 100kWh battery (94.9kWh net) with an electric motor on each axle will appeal to many.
> Audi A5 review – Ingolstadt's BMW 3-series rival steps up
Running on standard air-springs there’s an unexpected and welcome suppleness to the S6 and it’s one of the best riding Audi’s we’ve encountered, A8 included. The damping is measured and blends body control with ride comfort and absorbs pretty much everything a British road surface can throw at it.
On any road it’s relaxing, calming, unobtrusive and steers with clarity and responds tightly to your inputs. For a car weighing just shy of 2.4 tons – obscene, isn’t it? – it doesn’t feel leaden or heavy-footed. It’s not as reactive or as instinctive as the Porsche Taycan based Audi e-tron GT, but it’s not meant to be, the new A6 e-tron family is very much an Audi from the practical Audi side of the factory rather than the more expressive Audi Sport team. Then again, you can fit a family of five and the dog in an S6 Avant.
However, its weight means the S6’s 546bhp never feels as lively as you are expecting due to its 230bhp/ton figure. Hot hatch responses are closer to the experience than a supersaloon. The silent surge is instant – 62mph arrives in 3.9sec with a dose of launch control – but the acceleration tails off pretty quickly and then it feels mildly warm.
> BMW M5 Touring (G99) 2025 review – super estate returns to battle the Audi RS6
It also means there’s no real energy in how it drives. It has plenty of grip but you feel very remote from the process. The more you push the S6 the more it feels like a trim line than a performance model. Its rear-drive biased powertrain never really comes to the fore until you push it far beyond a level any customer will do.
And then there’s the range. Audi claims 388 miles for the S6 Avant, which if our experience is anything to go buy is a work of fiction to rival the expenses claims of evo’s editorial team. Charged to 100% the battery offered just 230 miles during February’s colder days of our seven day test, pull the plug at 80 percent and that range drops to 180 miles. Having said that, both proclaimed range numbers were very true to the actual distance travelled before recharging was required. But our Audi RS6 long termer, which can be purchased with some sizable discounts to match the S6’s list price, can easily cover 300+ miles on a tank of super unleaded.
This range is the stumbling block for the S6. It’s a car that feels like it’s designed to cover big miles in single trips in that trad big car way. From the soothing way it drives, the comfort it offers and the unfussed way it gets on with journeys there’s a very livable car within the S6. However, we had an outgoing A6 Avant 55 TFSIe hybrid on test immediately after the S6 loan, and while the new car was more comfortable, refined and integrated its technology far better it lacked the useability and range of its hybrid cousin. And when it comes to big, family estate cars useability is key.
We suspect the regular A6 e-tron models, which make up 95 percent of UK sales, will present a stronger useability case than the S6; if the S6 matched its claimed range of near 400 miles it would be harder to ignore.
Audi S6 e-tron price and rivals
You'll have sat with the S6 e-tron's £99,300 price for the entire review and in all likelihood, you won't have made sense of it. Given its use case as a premium electric car rather than a performance car with discernable dynamic qualities over and above lesser A6s, it's these for almost £30,000 less that are the obvious alternative to the S6.
Happily, its closest rival, the BMW i5 M60 Touring, runs a similarly nauseating £99,995 price of entry. Like the S6, lesser i5s probably hold more day-to-day appeal but it's worth noting the BMW does have a dynamic edge the Audi can't match. Forced to choose a large all-electric estate, it'd be hard to ignore the identically performant Porsche Taycan 4S Sport Turismo for £3k less, or the bog standard load-lugging Taycan for £12k less.
