‘What we petrolheads wanted but feared we’d never get’: Behind the wheel of Audi’s new, all-electric A6 e-tron Avant

Back in the combustion era and while still Prince of Wales, His Majesty The King favoured an Audi estate car for his personal ride. Charles is a motorist of taste and discernment and his Audis were a typically knowing choice.

A premium German estate is an omni-capable device: the kind of car you’d choose if you could only have one for the rest of your life. They have everything most of us want — quality, subtlety, pace and space — and little we don’t need. Choosing one over a SUV says you have means, but don’t feel the need to advertise it.

There are few cooler sights in motoring than a fast German estate car in its native habitat, skis on the roof and streaked with salt, spearing south on a wintry autobahn from Munich to the mountains for the weekend. But they’re cool everywhere, and were the choice of Britain’s country set long before the SUV arrived, as the various names for them suggest: estate car, shooting brake, station wagon.

Frustratingly for those of us — His Majesty included — who love a fast German load-lugger but have converted to EVs, their makers have been slow to electrify them. It’s easier to hide an EV’s batteries in an SUV, so that’s what most makers did first. The Porsche Taycan Sport Turismo is more of a sports car, and a lot more expensive. BMW’s i5 Touring only went on sale last summer, and deliveries of Audi’s new A6 e-tron Avant begin this month. Mercedes still doesn’t offer an electric estate at all.

In the meantime the King has had his crowned head turned by Audi’s electric SUVs, and likes them sufficiently to have granted the German marque the Royal Warrant last year. But might the new A6 e-tron Avant bring him back to the estate? To find out, Country Life has been testing the first example of the high-performance S6 version to reach British roads, before it has even been loaned to the Royal Mews.

It is a striking-looking thing, if not conventionally handsome. Aerodynamics are critical to making an electric car go further on a single charge and the hatchback version is the slipperiest Audi ever, with the estate not far behind. That explains the slightly odd-looking front end, with its solid grille, narrow daytime-running lights and headlamps and vents buried beneath. It also explains the (optional) cameras on stalks which replace conventional wing mirrors. The black strip along the side is there to break up the extra body depth required to accommodate the massive battery under the floor.

The interior is stunning though, trimmed mainly in dark, artificial ‘Dinamica’ suede and with a plethora of screens to remind you that you are now driving the fast Audi estate of the future. The instrument cluster ahead of you is a screen, of course: there’s a huge, curved, 14.5-inch high-definition OLED touchscreen display in the centre, screens in the doors in place of conventional wing mirrors, and an augmented-reality head-up display in which sat-nav instructions and safety hints are projected onto the windscreen but appear part of the scene ahead of you.

There’s even a separate 10.9-inch screen for the front passenger, from which they can control the sat-nav and audio systems, if you let them.

If that all sounds like too much screen, it’s endlessly configurable, much of it can be turned off, and the tech coheres to subtly lighten your mental load on the long road trips which this breed of car ought to ace. And it really can do long trips still, despite the switch to battery power. With its hallmark Audi quattro all-wheel drive provided by electric motors on each axle, the S6 has an official range of 388 miles.

Downgrade to the lighter, rear-drive only ‘Performance’ version of the standard A6 and you’ll get an astonishing official range of 456 miles. In the real world, you’ll travel around three-quarters of that distance before you need to charge, but even at motorway speeds your personal tank is likely to need draining long before your battery needs recharging. When you do, a 10-to-80% top-up takes 21 minutes on a fast charger.

That long range is dependent on your restraint with the S6’s incandescent performance, though. It is staggeringly, titanically fast, producing up to 543 horsepower and getting to 60mph in under four seconds: numbers that were once the preserve of supercars.

You can get EVs with even greater thrust: there are Teslas with more than 1,000 horsepower, but that sort of acceleration is unpleasant and largely unusable on public roads. You might only use the S6’s full power occasionally — to safely compress overtaking times or astonish friends — but it feels appropriate in a car which is meant to do everything well, and no compromises have been made to contain it.

The S6 corners flat, handles sharply and is what we petrolheads wanted but feared we’d never get: an electric car which is genuinely fun to drive. But it also does a passable impersonation of a limo when you need it to, with its fine ride and exceptional refinement.

Criticisms? At very nearly six figures the price of this range-topping S6 might make you wince, but the entry A6 cuts around a third from that bill. That slippery shape means the estate’s boot is the same size as the hatchback’s until you put the seats down, and the battery means a high floor and somewhat constrained legroom for regal rear seat passengers.

But overall the new, electric A6 and S6 provide the completeness which made their combustion forebears so appealing to those who really know their cars. Might that appeal be enough to win royal assent? Yes, we suspect: if His Majesty is driving himself.

The Audi S6 e-tron Avant, from £95,805, is available to order now.