Audi is finally a contender in the EV market

There is a lot going on with this Audi – including, to my horror, Car Karaoke. Reviewing it did start to make me feel more like a nerdy technologist than a revered motoring expert. But here’s my verdict.

Stephen Corby

There is a lot going on with this Audi which offers more than 30 different kinds of active safety technology.

3 min read

12:00AMMarch 21, 2025

The Weekend Australian Magazine

Most people can’t sing, and in the good old days those people were kind enough to keep their mouths shut. I remember a time before karaoke (a Japanese word whose derivation is debated, but I believe it means “dentistry for ears” or “self-inflicted shame”) infected our culture, and I blame it for smearing my TV screen with “reality” excrement like The Voice. Nothing proves the power of alcohol to induce self-delusion like karaoke, and when I take over the world it will be the second thing I ban, after cycling in Lycra.

You can imagine my horror, then, when an excited Audi employee flashed her hands across the many screens of the new Audi Q6 E Tron electric SUV (it has three of them, covering the entire dash from door to door, including one for the passenger), opened the new Audi App Store and suggested that we all play Car Karaoke (rear-seat occupants can scan a QR code and join in from the back on their phones, but only if I don’t slap them first).

To stop me from screaming, she quickly switched to showing off the other games you and your passenger can play on these expensive, expansive OLED screens, in between watching YouTube videos, including a driving game launched many years ago in a Tesla (yet again an established car company is copying Elon Musk, just as he’s becoming about as popular as lava enemas).

This is the first vehicle built on its new Premium Platform Electric (one it shares with the new all-electric Porsche Macan).

Audi’s Q6 feels like a significant achievement.

But wait, there’s more, because the driver has the option of another game called Space Shuttle, which they can play through the Augmented Reality-equipped head-up display. While I was desperate to be cynical about this, the way the spaceship in this game floats out in the air above your bonnet is genuinely impressive.

The theory is that you would play these games, using the shift paddles and the brake and throttle pedals as controllers, while you’re waiting for your Audi to charge. Presumably after you’ve gotten sick of all the other screen options, and assuming your phone is broken. And you don’t own a book, or an imagination.

Out on the road, the Augmented Reality technology is less impressive and more oppressive, as it graphically throws speed limits at you (accelerate fast and the virtual speedo visually assaults you; apparently this is to help provide a substitute for the sensations of acceleration that you miss out on while driving an EV, like revving noises) and lights up the edges of your lane or the car in front of you with red blobs of light.

There is a lot going on with this Audi, which offers more than 30 different kinds of active safety technology, and reviewing it did start to make me feel more like a nerdy technologist than a revered motoring expert. It also caused me to wonder whether the kind of customers this expensive Q6 is aimed at – prices start at $115,500 and rise to $151,400 for the sportiest SQ6 model – actually enjoy all of this flim flam. My Mum, for one, finds her iPhone confusing enough.

In isolation, the Q6 E Tron is an excellent electric SUV, and undoubtedly the best one that Audi has made so far.

The way the spaceship in this game floats out in the air above your bonnet is genuinely impressive.

Fortunately, as a car, rather than as a multi-faceted entertainment platform, Audi’s Q6 feels like a significant achievement. Until now, its EVs have felt slightly cobbled together, somehow inferior to its combustion cars, but this one – the first vehicle built on its new Premium Platform Electric (one it shares with the new all-electric Porsche Macan) – just feels like a proper Audi.

Weirdly, I had just driven its closely related sister, the Audi Q5, which is powered by old-tech engines, a week earlier and was thus able to directly compare the two. While the Q6 offers the kind of rushing, gushing power that only an EV can deliver, I would personally opt for one of the much cheaper petrol-powered Audi Q5s, and not just because I like changing gears and revving noises. The biggest difference between the two is the weight, with the EV coming in around half a tonne heavier. No matter how clever Audi’s suspension engineers are, they can’t make that kind of mass disappear, and it means the Q6 simply can’t be as nimble as the Q5.

Considering how similar the two look and feel, inside and out, if you’re willing to pay the extra for a Q6 you’re doing so not because of how the electric one drives but because you really, really want an EV. In which case it’s unkind of me even to mention how good the Audi Q5 is. Let’s forget that I did and suggest that you don’t drive the two back to back.

In isolation, the Q6 E Tron is an excellent electric SUV, and undoubtedly the best one that Audi has made so far. And, as usual with electric vehicles, it’s a real shame it’s so expensive.

At least the Car Karaoke game is free. But if I catch you playing it, you have been warned.