This luxe electric SUV has a cool party trick

Personally, I avoid car dealers with the same passion with which I shun Lycra, Brussels sprouts and the ear-harming yowls and y’alls of country music. But I will say this: Audi dealers must be phenomenally good at their jobs.

Stephen Corby

4 min read

12:00AMJune 29, 2024

Audi’s updated SQ8 E Tron electric SUV.

Personally, I avoid car dealers with the same passion with which I shun Lycra, Brussels sprouts and the ear-harming yowls and y’alls of country music – but I do like to ponder, when considering a new vehicle, how it is sold to normal people.

Some features, like the “new 2D grille” on Audi’s updated SQ8 E Tron electric SUV, are easy enough to show off just by pointing at them (although this one is still tough to explain, because it’s obviously a three-dimensional object, and if they’re really going to claim it’s a 2D one there are going to be some interesting arguments with customers who are physics professors).

The impressive thrust and quietude of an Audi EV like this would also be simple to demonstrate and prattle on about during a test drive, but exactly how would a salesperson explain the E Tron’s Digital Matrix headlights, which contain no fewer than 1.3 million micro mirrors (meaning they’re far too small to point at with your finger) which can tilt up to 5000 times per second (too quickly for the naked eye to see) and can paint light markings on the road ahead of you, but only at night and effectively only when you’re outside of a city and away from street lighting?

The E Tron’s Digital Matrix headlights contain no fewer than 1.3 million micro mirrors.

I’ve had these lights explained to me several times, and seen videos of how they work, which is about all you could do in a dealership, but I’ve never found this so inspiring that I’d want to part with extra money for them (they come as part of an optional Sensory Package, for $9600). It’s a bit like sitting in a hotel restaurant at breakfast time and being shown the dinner menu, which is definitely not available for all-day dining, but sounds mighty impressive as you’re tucking into tea and toast.

Recently, however, Audi dragged a bunch of us into the middle of nowhere – or Victoria, as I believe the residents call it – and lured us out of our rooms at night by promising fine dining and a chauffeured transfer.

After a long dinner, during which we established that roughly 100 per cent of people who buy Audi EVs are not concerned about things like range anxiety or towing ability, because they already have at least one other expensive German car with an engine in the garage (premium EVs shouldn’t be thought of as “second cars”, though, because they’re the vehicles one uses to get around town and do the school run in, while the other, combustion car is the dirty CO2 secret for weekends away), it was dark enough to experience the Digital Matrix lights from the passenger seat.

Not only can these clever lights “illuminate the road in high resolution”, but by breaking their beams into tiny parts they can effectively keep your high beams on without blinding oncoming drivers, paint dinky little markers that look like eyelashes on the road to show you where the centre of the lane is, and warn you of approaching hazards (they could paint a warning on the road ahead telling you to slow down for roadworks, for example).

They are, indeed, fiendishly clever (although I tend to prefer the little Audi light show they can perform on your garage wall at start-up, which looks like Iron Man’s targeting system), but they’re also a little freaky at first because as they flicker in and out it looks like the dodgy CGI wraiths from the end of the movie Ghost are coming to get your car.

Sexy lights aside, the S-badged version of the Q8 E Tron boasts an impressive three-motor set-up, which means each rear wheel has its own direct drive, making for higher cornering speeds and improved handling.

The basic Q8 E Tron starts at $140,600 while the SQ8 version is $173,600.

It struck me, however, while pushing this new E Tron along one of Australia’s most glorious driving roads, the Black Spur near Healesville, that EVs are a bit like a modern version of American muscle cars. They are stupendously overpowered and rapid in a straight line, and punch you out of one corner to the next with a firehose-surge of shunt, but they can also feel so heavy and cumbersome that they’re not anywhere near as much fun as old-school cars with far less amusing acceleration.

Also like a muscle car, this Audi seems to chew through the fuel – or the volts in this case – at an alarming rate. The claimed range for this SQ8 is 417km, but even the car’s own trip computer never seemed to think we’d get that far.

The other challenge for EVs is price, and while the Chinese are flooding the cheaper end of the market with cars that look like they’ve come from the bottom end of something unpleasant, the German brands are still expecting people to pay quite a lot for what, in no case, will be anyone’s only car. The basic Q8 E Tron starts at $140,600 while the SQ8 version is $173,600, and that’s before you add the Digital Matrix headlights.

Audi dealers must be phenomenally good at their jobs.