Audi Q4 e-tron Review & Prices

Audi has cooked up a rather good electric family SUV with the Q4. It’s got a lot of room inside, it looks good on the outside, it’s nice to drive and it feels posh, but it’s not that well equipped and it is expensive compared to some of its alternatives.

In fact, the Audi Q4 shares a lot of its under-the-skin makeup with the Volkswagen ID4, Cupra Tavascan and Skoda Elroq, so you can think of it as the Posh Spice of the electric SUV bunch.

It’s definitely the poshest looking of its Volkswagen, Cupra and Skoda counterparts, with a broad, high-set grille and adjoining LED headlights, sculpted flanks and wide rear light bar. The Tesla Model Y and Kia EV6 may look more futuristic, and the Tavascan looks far sportier, but the Audi has a low-key charm about it.

Audi Q4 e-tron: electric range, battery and charging data

Range: 250 - 332 miles
Efficiency: 3.6 - 3.7 mi/kWh
Battery size: 59kWh, 77kWh (usable)
Max charge speed: 136kW / 175kW
Charge time AC: 13hrs, 0-100%, 7.4kW
Charge time DC: 24mins, 10-80%, 165kW / 28mins, 10-80%, 175kW
Charge port location: Right side rear
Power outputs: 204hp, 286hp, 340hp

The interior is a bit more exciting, a mix of sharp angles and lines all over the place. The central infotainment touchscreen faces the driver, and it has crisp graphics and good touch responsiveness. Not so nice to the touch are the haptic steering wheel controls, which are fiddly and get covered in fingerprints.

You get a slick-looking driver’s display too, but there are a few scratchy plastics on the door cards and on the centre console; a shame given the soft-touch leatherette and plastics on the door tops and dashboard. It’s a great interior, nevertheless.

There’s plenty of space inside, especially in the back where tall passengers can sit in comfort with lots of headroom and legroom. Three abreast is a squeeze, though, and while the door bins are well sized, the centre-console cubby isn’t all that spacious..

Clever bottle holders are built into the doors, and while the boot is about average for a family SUV you get not one but two useful underfloor storage cubbies back there. Good luck getting your charger cables out with the boot spaces loaded up though…

Entry-level 40 e-tron models come with a claimed 251 miles of range, but you’ll have to step up to the 45 e-tron for the full potential 332 miles of range. The 55 quattro e-tron models are the performance range-toppers, but their four-wheel drive brings range down to a maximum 320 miles.

Around town the Q4 e-tron is easy to place on the road, with good forward visibility and well-sized mirrors inspiring confidence on tight corners. It’s easy to park too, especially in rear-wheel drive non-quattro form, with a 10.2-metre turning circle - smaller than a Renault 5.

Comfort is a mixed bag with the Q4 e-tron, and while entry-level models are rather comfortable, cars equipped with the optional 21-inch wheels tend to crash through sharp potholes and over ruts, and motorways are a similar story. Country roads are less boring than you might expect thanks to the well judged steering wheel weight and well controlled body lean - though you’re still never quite sure just how much grip the front wheels have.

As a cool family cruiser with a posh, spacious cabin, it makes for a great choice of car. You can check out new Audi Q4 e-tron deals on Carwow, or Audi Q4 e-tron lease deals to avoid the cash lump sum. There are used Q4 e-trons available through our network of trusted dealers, as well as other used Audis for sale. We can even help you sell your car when the time comes to switch.

The Audi Q4 e-tron is far from cheap, with the base model, short-range 40 Sport starting at over £47,000. It comes on 19-inch alloy wheels as standard, with LED lights front and rear, heated front seats and an 11.6-inch touchscreen infotainment system with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

Bigger battery 45 models are around £5,000 more, with over £1,000 more again for quattro all-wheel drive and £5,000 on top again for the high-performance 55 version. You’ll pay a couple of thousand on top of all the models for S-Line trim, and a few more again for Black Edition cars.

The Cupra Tavascan starts out at roughly the same price as the Audi, but the base-spec Volkswagen ID4 is around £8,000 cheaper than the Q4. While the base ID4 looks and feels a bit spartan in comparison to the Q4 e-tron, you can get a long-range Match model with far more kit and the optional (and fantastic) active cruise control with lane assist for basic Q4 e-tron money.

The Audi Q4 e-tron is comfortable and easy to drive around town, but it's not a huge amount of fun on a twisty road

In town

The Audi Q4 e-tron is a great car to drive around town, because it’s quiet and refined and handles bumps really well. There’s a bit of jiggle, particularly on models with big alloy wheels, but on the whole it’s a comfortable way to get around town.

In its normal setting the accelerator is quite sensitive, so it can be tricky not to jolt away from junctions, but popping it into eco makes things much easier. The brakes are smooth and don’t suffer from the jerkiness you get with some electric cars.

Visibility is a mixed bag – you get a good view out of the front but the rear pillars are quite big and the rear window small, so it can take a double-check of your blind spot to be confident of darting out in traffic. Front and rear parking sensors, as well as a rear-view camera, are standard-fit, so reversing into a parking space isn’t as daunting as it could be.

On the motorway

Out on the motorway the Audi Q4 e-tron is a quiet and relaxing place to roll on the miles. The suspension deals with bumps a bit better at higher speeds, and there’s little in the way of wind and tyre noise.

Even the less powerful 40 models have enough oomph to get you up to speed on a motorway slip road, or to pull off a quick overtake, though they’re noticeably less peppy than the 45 and 55 cars.

Adaptive cruise control is included as standard, but you can upgrade this with the Technology Pack Pro to include a lane-changing assistant. The head-up display and instrument screen show white arrows if a lane is clear, and if you want to change lanes you can press the indicator and the car will provide steering assistance to get you across.

On a twisty road

Chances are that if you’re looking at an electric family car, you’re probably not too fussed about how good its impression of a sports car is. As a result, it’s not a huge deal that the Audi Q4 e-tron is far from being one of the more fun electric cars you might consider – check out the Tesla Model Y or Ford Mustang Mach-e if that’s what you’re after.

That being said, if you don’t expect too much it’s perfectly capable of putting a smile on your face. The steering is quite light, though far less boat-like than in its Volkswagen counterparts, and you don’t get much feedback about how much grip the front tyres have, but the body doesn’t lean too much so you can get into a bit of a rhythm through the bends.

The rear seats are spacious, even for tall passengers, but the boot is bigger in a Skoda Enyaq and VW ID4

Space in the front is really good, and it’s easy to find a comfortable driving position. The Q4 isn’t as tall as other SUVs, but you can set the seat right up to get a good view of the road ahead.

With the flat floor, and the inherently greater space efficiency of an electric car, you’d expect just a little more space for odds and ends in the cabin. The Q4’s little lozenge-like gear selector switch sits on a panel that juts out from the centre of the dashboard, and while there’s decent storage beneath it, it does feel like the space could have been made more practical.

There are good-sized cupholders as well as some awesome bottle-holders built into the door cards; they're a great, logical solution, freeing up the door bins for odds and ends. The storage box under the armrest seems oddly small.

Space in the back seats

Space in the back is fantastic, with loads of room for your legs even behind a tall driver, and you’ll have no complaints about headroom unless you’re giving the local basketball team a lift.

The middle seat is also a little more useful than similar alternatives, and thanks to the flat floor there’s plenty of room for three to put their feet.

There are ISOFIX anchors for child seats on the outer rear seats, as well as the front passenger seat, and the covers for the anchors simply flip-up, rather than needing to be removed. There are also standard electronic child locks for the rear doors, which are very handy if you’re regularly carrying kids around.

Rear seat passengers also get decent door bins and seat-back pockets, but the cupholders in the rear folding armrest aren’t positioned ideally — they’re right where your elbow naturally goes.

Boot space

The standard Q4 e-tron has a seats-up boot capacity of 520 litres, which is less than you’ll get in a Volkswagen ID4 (543 litres) or a Skoda Enyaq (585 litres). Still, a flat floor and a wide opening makes it very easy to load up, and if you collapse the rear seats you’ll open up 1,490 litres of space.

There’s a useful bit of under-floor storage, as well as some space under the under-floor storage which is mainly for stashing charging cables, but the middle section can also hide valuables that you want to keep out of sight. It’s disappointing that there’s no ‘frunk’ or storage space under the high bonnet — all that space is taken up by air conditioning and electronic control units.

The infotainment system is generally quick and easy to use, but the touch-sensitive steering wheel controls are fiddly

The Audi Q4 e-tron’s interior is a combo of posh-feeling upholstery, big, crisp screens and lots of aluminium-look trim that make it feel very upmarket inside. It’s certainly ahead of the Volkswagen ID4 in that respect.

The cheap plastics at the lower edges of the dashboard and on the doors don’t necessarily fit with Audi’s upmarket image, but those are largely tucked away, and overall the cabin looks and feels appropriately plush and upmarket.

You’ll breathe a sigh of relief when you see that Audi has kept proper, physical buttons and rotary switches for the air conditioning system – they are so much easier and more intuitive to use than the touchscreen-slider controls in the ID4.

Even the entry-level Q4 e-tron comes with an 11.6-inch touchscreen infotainment system with satellite navigation, as well as Android Auto and (wireless, if you’ve got the right phone) Apple CarPlay connectivity. There’s optional wireless phone charging too. You get two USB-C connections up front, and two more in the back.

It’s also now available with Amazon Alexa as the on-board assistant, allowing you to manage your calendars and shopping lists, as well as control compatible smart home devices via voice commands.

It’s all very slick and easy to use, which is good news because the mechanically similar ID5 and Cupra Born have frustratingly clunky infotainment systems.

The only downside is that Audi has decided to use touch-sensitive steering wheel controls, rather than physical buttons, and these are rather too fiddly to use, making it easy to select something you didn’t want, or miss the menu item that you were looking for. Sometimes, innovation is a bit too clever for its own good.

Elsewhere, an uprated Sonos audio system is available as part of an options pack, as is a wireless charge pad and a very impressive augmented-reality head-up display.

You only have one battery option with the Audi Q4 e-tron, which has a usable capacity of 77kWh. There’s two motor options called ‘45’ and ‘55’, with the former available with both rear- and all-wheel drive, and the latter not offered with rear-wheel drive.

The ‘45’ has 286hp and can go from 0-62mph in 6.7 seconds (0.1secs faster in the all-wheel drive model), while the ‘55’ has 340hp and a 0-62mph time of 5.4 seconds. Improvements to the motors for 2024 mean they’re more efficient than before, and we did see a slight improvement to 3.4miles per kWh in our time with the car.

The Audi Q4 e-tron offers an electric range of up to approximately 253 to 332 miles on a full charge, depending on the model and driving conditions. If you want to maximise range then the mid-level, rear-wheel drive 45 model is the one to go for, with official figures suggesting 332 miles is possible. The 55 car has a maximum range of 319 miles, while the base-trim 40 model makes do with 250 miles.

Fast public charging has been improved too, so you now have a maximum of 175kW in all-wheel drive models and 165kW in rear-driven models. The result is a 10-80% charge time of less than half an hour.

There’s minimal Vehicle Excise Duty to pay because the Audi Q4 e-tron is an electric vehicle, but all Q4 e-trons are subject to the luxury car supplement in years two to six. Being an EV means company car drivers get a bargain basement Benefit-in-Kind tax rate.

Europe’s independent car safety investigators, Euro NCAP, gave the Audi Q4 e-tron five stars, and that means more these days than just how well it bounces off a wall or a pole. It also covers assistance systems, such as its autonomous emergency braking systems, so NCAP thinks the Q4 is excellent at avoiding crashes as well as absorbing them.

Some extra assistance kit is available as part of the Technology Pack Pro – it’s expensive, but also includes some nice-to-haves such as an upgraded sound system and Matrix LED headlights.

Although Audi’s reputation for reliability isn’t great – in 2023 it finished 30th out of 32 in Auto Express’s owner satisfaction survey Driver Power – the Q4 e-tron has actually proved to be pretty dependable. It’s based on Volkswagen Group’s ‘MEB’ architecture, and aside from some early software issues it appears to be quite reliable across the various brands that use it.

The Q4 e-tron comes standard with a three-year/60,000-mile warranty, which is in line with most other premium car makers, but it’s also the minimum you get in the UK. The battery’s coverage stretches to eight years or 100,000 miles, at least.