The Electric Audi S6 Is An Almost-£100k Car

The Audi A6 has gone electric. That doesn’t mean Audi’s abandoned combustion for its mid-size exec saloon – yet – but its new naming strategy will see even numbers used for EVs, and odd numbers for their petrol, diesel and hybrid equivalents. That means that the A6 and sportier S6 are now only available as EVs – and they don’t come cheap.

As before, the A6 is a large-ish saloon. Well, sort of – as it’s done with the new A5 (the A4’s successor, remember), Audi has rejected the traditional saloon design in favour of a liftback with a fully opening tailgate. It calls this design a Sportback. Don’t worry – there’s a big, capacious Avant estate too, which we saw previewed back in 2022 in concept form. These swoopy new bodies have been penned with aerodynamics in mind, right down to the rear-view cameras. The Sportback has a drag coefficient of just 0.21, with the Avant not far behind at 0.24.

It’s based on the Premium Platform Electric that also underpins the Q6 E-Tron and new Porsche Macan, and will find its way under a whole lot more cars in the coming years.

At launch, there are two powertrain choices. The base car, the A6 E-Tron Performance, gets a single motor driving the rear wheels. This provides 362bhp for a 0-62mph time of 5.4 seconds and a top speed of 130mph. That’ll cost you from £69,900 for the Sportback, and £71,700 for the Avant.

Then there’s the S6, which gets motors driving both the front and rear axles for a total of 496bhp – unless you have Launch Control active, in which case the car pushes out 543bhp.  This means it’ll hammer out 0-62mph in 3.9 seconds, and hit 149mph. Further powertrains with both one and two motors will arrive further down the line.

We’d recommend sitting down for this next bit: the new S6 Sportback starts at £97,500, and if you want the Avant (which you do), you’ll need to stump up £99,300. Both of those prices are for kitted out Edition 1 cars, and it’s likely a slightly cheaper version will go on sale in due course, but still. Oof.

That said, this particular shock to the system is mainly because S6 is a badge we’re familiar with, and the outgoing V8-powered car costs from ‘just’ £73k. Arguably the new S6’s biggest rival, the BMW i5 M60, is a similarly eye-watering £97,745, but it does offer a considerably gutsier 593bhp.

Both A6 and S6 get a 94.9kWh battery, providing a quoted range of 463 miles in the A6 Sportback and 437 in the Avant. The S6’s battery-draining dual-motor punch drops that figure to 405 and 388 miles, respectively. The all-important 10 to 80 per cent charge can be completed in 21 minutes on a rapid charger.

The interior, unsurprisingly, presents you with a wall of screens: an 11.9-inch digital instrument display, a 14.5-inch main infotainment screen, and an extra 10.9-inch display for the passenger, which can use some clever tech to only display images to them, not the driver. Then, there are the little extra screens in the corners to display the rear view cameras’ feeds.

That multitude of screens houses an Android Automotive operating system, capable of receiving over-the-air updates, and set to receive the inevitable ChatGPT update further down the line, which can handle ‘general knowledge’ questions – useful if you suddenly have a desire to find out interesting facts about otters as you drive along.

The new A6 and S6 are on sale in the UK now, with first customer deliveries set for February next year. If you like the way they look, but EVs (or paying almost six figures for a mid-size saloon) aren’t your thing, then an equivalent combustion car – the A7 – is set to arrive in 2026.