Long-term test: Audi A6 Avant S line e-tron Performance

On this evidence, taking an EV outside your charging comfort zone to Europe isn’t the big thing it used to be. The A6 e-tron also showed its credentials as a cruiser, although a bit more room in the back seats would be welcome.

I went on holiday to France, for two weeks, in an electric car, and have lived to tell the tale. Obviously, there’s nothing unusual about this. Thousands of UK EV owners – including our deputy editor, Richard Ingram – did the same this year, but not that long ago, the long-distance family holiday was still being held up as something that would be a nightmare in a non-petrol car.

Charging was indeed the biggest concern before we left. I have a home charger and rarely use public charging in the UK, so I was fearful that juicing the Audi up might involve a maze of app downloads and instructions in a foreign language. If the worst came to the worst, the fuzzy remnants of my GCSE French only extend to asking where the train station is. I prayed this wouldn’t come in handy.

There was no need to worry. As in the UK, Android Auto through my phone and the Audi A6 e-tron’s own software – also Google-based – quickly and accurately showed local chargers that weren’t in use. The built-in system showed more locations, highlighting ones at Audi dealers, but both give you the speed of the chargers and how many plugs are vacant. It’s simple to re-route to your chosen one.

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All the rapid chargers I encountered could be used with a bank card and a rough average for the three 230kW chargers I used was 50p per kWh, when you’d probably pay over 80p in Britain. The A6 can charge at up to 270kW and despite others being plugged in – gaining 150 miles of range in a 20-minute pit stop or filling the battery from 20 per cent in 40 minutes.

I used more lower-powered fast chargers for top-ups while parked in various places, but they weren’t so easy. I had no RFiD card, which would have been a good idea in hindsight, and all except one needed an app, which isn’t easy in an underground car park with no signal.

Even so, charging in France was almost seamless. From my limited sample, provision seemed at least as good as in the UK and better value. Finding vacant chargers without the detailed information on my phone or the car’s sat-nav would have been very difficult, though.

The A6 was in its element on the autoroutes, feeling very composed and impressively long-legged. A decade ago, the equivalent Audi may have been packing a big diesel, and the e-tron has something of that flexibility, but you don’t get that rumble from the engine or the plume of unmentionables from the exhaust. It gains speed effortlessly, rides smoothly without floating about like a cross-Chael ferry, and tracks true without constant steering tweaks.

You just have to watch your speed. At 60mph, I was getting close to four miles per kWh, but at the 80mph French limit this plummeted to little more than three. That’s a drop in range from 350 miles to close to 260, and could be the difference between needing a stop or not.

As for the rest of the A6 e-tron’s holiday car arsenal, the boot proved spectacularly roomy for a family of four – to the extent that I started thinking about extra stuff we could take. Three big bags, body boards, footballs, golf clubs... they all went in. The complicated parcel shelf mechanism had to be detached, because there’s a risk of bending it if you slam the hatch on a fully loaded boot, and a few items were relocated to the frunk, but the Audi still gets a gold star for luggage capacity.

The rear bench seat is very low to the car’s floor, so taller occupants have to bunch their knees up to an extent that you don’t reall expect from an executive car. My near-six-foot-tall son wasn’t too happy about the legroom, but he got used to it and was cheered no end by my “hilarious” attempts to use the voice control. The A6 can’t understand a word I say – just like the locals when I try their language.

The A6 e-tron’s colour and long, low estate shape are hard to fault, but some of its EV-specific styling looks out of place on a £70k Audi

I was delighted to see our long-term Audi A6 Avant e-tron arrive in Malpelo blue, a greeny-blue metallic. It’s a £775 option and definitely my pick of the available colours that otherwise amount to black, white, a navy blue and two greys. There isn’t even a red!

So, we got the right colour and I’m a big fan of the low, long estate shape. What I’m less keen on are the elements that mark the A6 e-tron out as an EV.

To my eyes, the standard A6 is a much more handsome car. Where it gets a wide front grille, the e-tron has a body-coloured panel between two-element headlights that seems less impactful.

The biggest change, though, is down the sides, where the black plastic panel along the e-tron’s sills looks cheap. A petrol or hybrid A6 has simple sculpted flanks, but those cars is 1,457mm tall. The A6 e-tron is 1,527mm by virtue of being based on VW’s PPE electric car platform, with a battery under the floor.

The black panel serves to visually disguise some of the extra height, but to my eyes at least, it looks out of place on a £70k Audi. Maybe a nice dark grey or black paint to hide it would have been the way to go after all…

Estate tees off its time on our fleet with a round at the golf course

It’s said that more business is done on the golf course than in the office, so we knew where to take the Audi A6 Avant e-tron for the introduction to its long-term test Golf courses have been a stereotypical stomping ground for executives and their cars down the years, but today’s market is much more complicated. We’re teeing-off on a long-term test to discover where our car fits in.

We’re evaluating Audi’s large executive car in its latest e-tron all-electric guise and the estate bodystyle. The powertrain is fitting because today’s company-car tax regime has fuelled most remaining business-car users into electric cars of one kind or another. The more practical Avant body shape feels ideal in light of how more versatile premium SUVs have sucked customers away from traditional executive models. In these respects, this A6 is the blueprint for the modern exec car.

In the old days, those skilled at shimmying up corporate ladders would qualify for a salubrious saloon on their company-car plan. It would, in all likelihood, be German and a chief concern in the selection process would be how it would look in the golf club car park. Even high flyers with no intention of picking up a putter will have been aware of this default measure of company-car cachet.

Our A6 – Large Company Car of the Year in our New Car Awards – can hold its own in the most upmarket of parking areas. It’s certainly a sleeker shape than the average SUV, helped by the long roofline on the low estate body. The Malpelo Blue metallic paint (£775) makes a welcome change from the sober shades that dominate the new-car colour pallet in 2026.

I’m not a fan of the blanked-off grille, the squinty headlights or the black plastic inserts along the sills – a common addition on EVs when designers want to disguise the bulk of an underfloor battery. But the estate shape and the purposeful back end do appeal. I’ll leave you to make your own mind up.

Aside from the paint, the Technology Pack (here discounted to £150, it retails for £3,195) with its augmented reality head-up display, is the only option fitted. As is increasingly the case with new cars, the range of options on the A6 is quite limited. S line gets you different bumpers and a special 20-inch wheel design, plus a nicer three-spoke steering wheel and sports seats inside. Our car has cloth seats (a no-cost option), which have been much appreciated in the hot weather.

It all means the total price of £75,085 for our A6 S line e-tron Performance is representative of what most customers will pay. A BMW i5 Touring in M Sport trim starts at £76,455.

The Performance powertrain is the mid-range choice in the e-tron line-up above the standard car, with less power and a smaller battery, but below the all-wheel-drive e-tron quattro. You get a 94.9kWh usable battery capacity and an official WLTP range of 443 miles. So far, I have been able to match the official figure of 4.0 miles per kWh, but only on a 50mph stop-start cruise round a busy M25. In normal driving, 3.2 miles per kWh seems more realistic, but the weather has been warm since our test started, so that figure may be as good as it gets.

Performance is lively. The 362bhp output can be briefly increased to 375bhp if you use launch control, but a big family estate car needs launch control about as much as it does square wheels. It’s enough for 0-62mph in 5.4 seconds, but in the real world it means more than enough acceleration to join motorways and get swiftly out of junctions.

The 502-litre boot easily swallows three golf bags with the drivers removed, plus you’ve got a 27-litre ‘frunk’ in the nose. An early observation from the larger of our offspring (a 14-year-old who is close to six feet tall) is that under-thigh support in the rear could be better, because the seat base is low to the floor and he has to bunch his knees up. The touch-to-open electric charging flaps – one on each side of the car – are neat, but not when you’re trying to wash the car and they keep opening.

*Insurance quote from AA (0800 107 0680) for a 42-year-old in Banbury, Oxon, with three points.

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Steve looks after the Auto Express website; plaing new content, growing online traffic and managing the web team. He’s been a motoring journalist, road tester and editor for over 20 years, contributing to titles including MSN Cars, Auto Trader, The Scotsman and The Wall Street Journal.

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