Audi has unveiled its latest concept car, the A6 Avant E-tron, a luxury executive car that appears to be relatively close to production.
Audi surprised us last year with a concept version of an all-electric A6 sedan, which will be built on a new EV platform the company is jointly developing with sister company Porsche. The two Volkswagen Group companies are calling the new EV architecture Premium Platform Electric, or PPE. They first started talking about it a few years agoand there are plans to power the larger vehicles in the upcoming electric teams from Audi and Porsche.
It’s also at least Audi Fourth separate platform for its electric vehicles. 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 it builds the Q4 E-Tron and Q4 Sportback E-tron on Volkswagen’s modular MEB platform.
The A6 Avant E-tron is the first “completely tangible look at future production models” that will be built on the PPE platform, said Oliver Hoffmann, Audi board member for technical development, in a press release.
Much of that ultimately won’t matter much to customers, because it’s not like these Audi EVs will say “powered by Porsche” on the steering wheel or exterior badging. But there are vast resources in the Volkswagen Group – especially as it attempts to break Tesla’s early stranglehold on the electric vehicle market – and Audi is clearly trying to leverage the best of what’s available in the most large conglomerate to make a big mark with its electric vehicles.
Calling the A6 Avant E-tron “production-ready” isn’t hyperbole; Audi itself describes the concept as “production-oriented,” meaning this car is likely headed for the assembly line in the near future.
If this turns out to be true, the A6 Avant E-tron will earn the distinction of Audi’s longest-range electric vehicle to date, with 700 kilometers (435 miles) of estimated range using the European WLTP standard. depending on drive system and model. variant. The sportback will also be fast, going from 0 to 100 km/h (62 mph) in less than four seconds. And with its 800-volt system and up to 270 kW charging capacity, it can absorb enough electrons in just 10 minutes at a fast-charging station to travel around 300 kilometers (186 miles).
The A6 Avant E-tron will be similar in size to the Audi A6 and A7, at over 16 feet long, 6.4 feet wide and 4.7 feet tall. The wagon’s profile is sleek, and Audi hopes to squeeze a little more out of its aerodynamic design. The shape is intended to reduce aerodynamic drag, with Audi claiming a coefficient of 0.22 – just a few notches above the record drag coefficient of 0.20 claimed by Mercedes-Benz for the EQS sedan.
Just as with the A6 E-tron concept, the A6 Avant E-tron will feature “Digital Matrix LED” headlights (which are only available outside of the US, although we recently updated our regulations allowing smarter headlights). These lights, which use a complex shutter system to sculpt LED light into specific shapes and animations, can now project an Audi-developed video game onto a nearby wall or garage door.
Four LED spotlights in the corners of the vehicle can create flashing animations on the road. And three of them integrated into each side of the body can do everything from present floor greetings for the driver and passengers to alert cyclists that a door is about to open. .
The A6 Avant E-tron isn’t a vision of a distant future where self-driving vehicles double as rolling luxury saloons, like Audi’s Grandsphere and Skysphere concepts. It’s a more grounded glimpse of what’s to come, namely sleek, well-designed and expertly appointed luxury electric vehicles that are sleek and spacious enough to serve as chauffeured vehicles for 1 percent.
