Audi has unveiled its latest concept car, the A6 Avant E-tron, a luxury executive car that appears to be relatively close to production readiness.
Last year, Audi surprised us with a concept version of the A6 all-electric sedan, which will be built on a new EV platform the company is developing with its subsidiary Porsche. The two companies in the Volkswagen Group are calling the new EV architecture Premium Platform Electric, or PPE. It was first talked about a few years ago and is planned to power larger cars in the future electric stables of Audi and Porsche.
It’s also at least Audi’s fourth standalone EV platform.
It’s also at least Audi’s fourth standalone EV platform. Audi has adapted one of its internal combustion platforms to include batteries and electric motors for the original E-tron and E-tron Sportback. The company uses the Porsche Taycan’s J1 platform to power the E-tron GT. And he’s building the Q4 E-Tron and Q4 Sportback E-tron on Volkswagen’s modular MEB platform.
The A6 Avant E-tron is the first “totally tangible look at future production models” that will be built on the PPE platform, Oliver Hoffmann, Audi board member for technical development, said in a statement.
Grid view
A lot of this won’t mean much to customers in the long run, as these Audi EVs won’t say “powered by Porsche” on the steering wheel or on the exterior badge. But the Volkswagen Group has huge resources, especially as it tries to break Tesla’s early hold on the electric car market, and Audi is clearly trying to use the best of what’s available in the larger conglomerate to make a big mark on its electric vehicles.
Calling the A6 Avant E-tron “ready for production” is no exaggeration; Audi itself describes the concept as “production-oriented,” meaning this car is likely to be destined for the assembly line in the near future.
If this turns out to be true, the A6 Avant E-tron would earn the title of Audi’s longest-range electric vehicle to date, with an estimated European WLTP range of 700 kilometers (435 miles), depending on drive system and model. option. The sportback will be fast too, accelerating from 0 to 100 km/h (62 mph) in less than four seconds. And with its 800-volt system and up to 270 kW of charging power, it can get enough electrons in just 10 minutes at a fast charging station to travel about 300 kilometers (186 miles).
The A6 Avant E-tron will be similar in size to the Audi A6 and A7.
The A6 Avant E-tron will be similar in size to the Audi A6 and A7: over 16 feet long, 6.4 feet wide and 4.7 feet high. The station wagon’s profile looks sleek, and Audi is hoping to squeeze extra range out of its aerodynamic design. The shape is designed to reduce aerodynamic drag: Audi claims a coefficient of 0.22 – just a few notches above Mercedes-Benz’s claimed record drag coefficient of 0.20 for the EQS sedan.
As with the A6 E-tron concept, the A6 Avant E-tron will feature “Digital Matrix LED” headlights (which are only available outside the US, although we just recently updated our rules to allow smarter headlights). These lights, which use a sophisticated shutter system to shape and animate LED light, can now project an Audi-designed video game onto a nearby wall or garage door.
Four LED spotlights in the corners of the car can animate turn signals on the road. And three of them, built into each side of the body, can do everything from greeting messages on the ground to the driver and their passengers to warning cyclists that the door is about to open.
The A6 Avant E-tron is not a vision of a distant future where autonomous vehicles can be used as luxury cabins, like the Audi Grandsphere and Skysphere concepts. It’s a more down-to-earth look at what’s right around the corner, which is sleek, well-designed, expertly equipped luxury electric vehicles that are sleek and spacious enough to serve as chauffeur-driven vehicles for the 1 percent.