Electric executive express – Audi Q8 e-tron review

The familiar Tour Pack (£1,995) remains available and comprises adaptive cruise with active lane assist, emergency assist, predictive efficiency assistant, turn assist and swerve assist, while the City Assist Pack (£1,495) adds Audi pre-sense rear, exit warning, cross traffic assist front and rear, lane change assistant and park assist with parking aid. Audi’s virtual door mirrors can also be added (£1,750).

What do we think?

Well, it’s an Audi and so it’s going to be good so let’s get a couple of issues out of the way – and to be fair these are pretty personal ones:

Cameras instead of door mirrors – while the concept is sound, the screens are mounted on the door panels, just behind the windscreen but the cameras are out on stalks where the mirrors would normally be – so guess where I kept looking first? It’s something I’m sure a new generation will take to immediately but it’s annoying for a motoring dinosaur like me.

Sensors – now these are handy but there are just too many of them. Trying to reverse into a parking space, with cars to the left, right and rear as well as people and traffic passing in all directions set off a cacophony of sound which honestly messed with my head. I simply did not know where to look and ended up driving to a remote part of the car park to park in peace.

Those out of the way, there’s plenty to like about the Q8 if you can afford one. A monthly lease cost will be around £730 but it does have all the executive bells and whistles.

The Q8 e-tron has been upgraded to charge at a maximum of 170kW apparently because the engineers wanted the car to be more dependable to live with. That means charging from 10 to 80% on the smallest battery model can take just 28 minutes or 31 minutes for the larger battery.

In terms of interior space, there’s decent room in the back even though there are hundreds of battery cells under the floor. So, front and rear passengers are not going to be cramped for space.

Behind the wheel, everything feels very smooth as the car glides almost silently around the roads. Steering is firmly weighted and the switch from acceleration to brake regeneration is remarkably smooth. It’s quite easy to get carried away in terms of speed because it is all so smooth. There is a sport option but you’ll burn your range pretty swiftly.