Audi Q4 e-tron 2021 review - see why it's the best electric SUV!

This is the new Audi Q4 e-tron, and it's a vehicle that is perfect for the current times. You see, it's an SUV, which are really popular. It's a full electric vehicle, which is where everything's going. Plus, look at the grill. It's clearly prepared for a pandemic because it's already wearing its mask like that, isn't it? There's my impression of the new Audi Q4 e-tron. Anyway, in this video, I'm going to tell you everything you need to know about this car. I'm going to tell you what I like about it, what I don't like about it, what it's like to drive, and I'm going to check out its performance and, of course, being an electric car, its efficiency and the real-world range you'll get from it. Anyway, I'm Mark Watson, and you're watching CarWow. Buying a new car? Then head to CarWow, and my team will help you find your next car at a fair price. CarWow, your one-stop car buying comparison site. Let's start off this video by talking about the price. Actually, no, let's start off by talking about why I'm filming in the rain, yet I'm just wearing T-shirt and shorts. I just didn't read the weather forecast. Got it wrong. I think Audi's also got it wrong with the pricing of this car. You see, it starts from just over £40,000, and it does seem worth it. It's just that then you don't get the £2,500 government grant for electric cars because it's just a bit too expensive. Hmm. You can go into CarWow and you can save an average of £230 off a new Q4 e-tron through us. Doesn't sound like much, but that's because the car's new. The discounts might increase. However, CarWow isn't just about getting a discount. It's about comparing different models and the actual price you're going to pay for them. Now, if you want to do that, you can click on the pop-out banner there to go to CarWow, but we're offering a new service now, which is even more impressive. I like this feature, right? So through CarWow, you can actually sell your own car. All you do is input the details, upload some photos, and you'll get five offers back on your car from our trusted CarWow dealers. It could be the one that you buy your new car off or a completely different one. They'll give you the cash and take your car away. It's dead simple. If you want to find out more about that, you can click that link or the description, or just simply Google, help me, CarWow, and my team and I'll help you choose the right car for you and get it for a fair price from one of our trusted dealers. And we'll also help your silly car as well. We've got it all covered. Now let's talk about the design because Audis are all about the design, really. And this is a good-looking car from the rear. Like the bigger e-tron, you've got the full-length light bar. I'll show you a clip of it lit up now. You've got a roof spoiler as well, a nicely designed rear bumper. And of course, because it's electric, there's none of Audi's fake exhaust nonsense going on at all. I like what they've done here as well. So you've got the badging for the Q4 there and the model designation, which is the 40, which relates to the power, and it says e-tron there. But I like the way they've got e-tron embossed in this part of the rear bumper. That's pretty nice, that is. Now you're going to be able to get another version of this car called the Sportback, which has a more steeply raked rear end. Here's an image of that car now, but this is the one that's slightly more practical. Here at the side, the Q4 looks rather like a Q3, but it's actually about 10 centimetres longer because it's built on a completely different platform. It's the electric car platform. It's quite nice there, lots of creases. You've got your SUV lifestyle roof bars, darling. And you've got this two-tone effect here over the wheel arches. Now, on lesser models, this is like a grey colour rather than this painted blacky colour. Doesn't look quite as stylish as ever. You know, they want you to move up the range. One reason to move up the range is wheel size. So the entry-level car, the Sport, gets 19-inch wheels, which are a little bit too small for this kind of car. These are the mid-level 20s, but you can get 21-inch wheels. There is one thing that is a little bit meh, though. Look at this drum brake. Old-fashioned drum brake at the rear on this car. Now, Audi says that that's because when you have an electric car, you don't use your brakes so much, and the rear brakes get used even less, and so they get rusty and they look bad. I don't know if that's just PR bull****, right? Because other electric cars have this at the back, and the drums just look a bit crappy, don't they? It's a bit of a shame. Other than that, though, good-looking car from the side. Even better looking, in my opinion, with the Sportback version, which I'm going to show you from the side now. Yeah, keep on pointing out the Sportback version. I think I prefer the look of it. I think the least successful part of this car is the front, with this huge grille, which is completely unnecessary, because being an electric car, it doesn't need a huge grille to cool the engine. It's blanked out. It's just a design feature, really. You can get it in different styles, like body-coloured and blanked out, but in this silver, it's a bit too much in your face. Also, I finally found a fake vent. Look, there's fake vents here and there. See, they're still at it. This isn't fake, though. This is actually a vent to feed air into a radiator, which does cool the electrical system. In terms of the lights, I'm going to come on to these lights a little bit later on, but as standard, you get LEDs, and you can move it to the top of the range. Then you get those matrix LEDs, which will blank out part of their beam, so you don't dazzle oncoming drivers. Overall, though, I do think this car is quite a bit better looking than the Volkswagen ID4, which it shares many of its parts with. That car just looks like a blob, whereas this has a bit more about it. Do you agree with me? Let me know in the comments below what you think of the look of this car. The inside of this Q4 is pretty nice, but then Audi always does nice interior designs, doesn't it? I like the shape of the dashboard, the way it's all angular, and there's different colour trims to help brighten things up, though it is still quite dark. They're very grey and black, the trims. There is only one particular thing I don't like so much, and that's the shape of these air vents here. They're a little bit too big, but the rest of it is really cool. I particularly like this hexagonal steering wheel that you get on the high spec version, which this car is. Though, cameraman Lewis, what do you think? It's ugly. He thinks it's ugly. He's wrong. You're wrong. Wrong. I like this feature as well. The car is off. When I turn it on, though, you're going to get things light up on the steering wheel for the buttons. Yay. Look, I like that. What I don't like is that they're touch sensitive buttons. In fact, they're touch sensitive and press, so you can either press or touch and swipe. Just give me one option. I don't need two ways of using the button. And yeah, they are just more fiddly than physical buttons on old fashioned Audi steering wheels. Can't fault the quality. It's generally pretty nice in it, as you'd expect from an Audi. Things are brittle down here, but it's all solid, and that's the only real cheap bit that's high up and in your eye line that you might touch when you're going for the handle. The handle does feel nice. I'll tell you what's also nice, the driving position. So I've actually got the car in its lowest slung seating position, so it feels a little bit sporty, but there's loads of headroom here. So if you want to, you can really get the full SUV feeling. I mean, look at this. I'm jacking it all the way up. This is how my mum would drive it. And then you get a much better view forward. But yeah, now this bit is quite interesting where you've got your driver's controls there. So that's your gear selector, which is a little bit different. I prefer it than the big gear selectors, which seems pointless on automatic cars. But then we've got some other touch sensitive buttons. It's the one for the stereo volume control there. Obviously, you have it on the steering wheel as well, but I don't like that so much. You've got some storage down here, your connectivity there, USB-C inputs and 12 volts still. And this car has wireless charging as well. You've got your cup holders there and I've got my Audi branded bottle bits in there and you've got decent sized door bins. Wait there, I'm just... The quality of the car is better than the quality of their drinks bottles. Look, that's got a leak. There's a little bit of storage in there. It's not great. And the glove box, they're doing that thing that Peugeot does. There's clearly the fuse box behind there and they haven't transferred it across with the switch to right hand drive. You end up with a slightly smaller glove box, which is fine for smaller bottles, but you'd never be able to fit a big bottle in there. That is a little bit annoying. Can't flop the seats though. These are very comfy. And the highest bit cars get this S in Boston, the S line and above. How's it? Sporty seats, look good. Infotainment system. Once again, it's the traditional Audi system. It's nice, it's easy to use. You can get an even larger version of this, though it's not available to order just now, which is apparently even better. And you've got the digital driver's display, which is clear, easy to swipe through. Really nice views on that as well. All that easy to use. What I'd do though is just plug in my phone because this thing comes with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto as standard. I just prefer Google Maps than in-house sat navs. The only problem is though, that you can't project your Google Maps onto this digital driver's display. It'll only show here if you're using it from your smartphone. I wish it'd just integrate that. It's not that hard, surely. Can't complain about this though. At least Audi doesn't make you operate the climate control system through the touchscreen. They have some separate buttons here so you can just be driving along and change the temperature and fan speed quite easily without having to take your eyes off the road for too long, which is a good thing. Here in the back, the Q4 e-tron is very spacious. It does feel roomier than a Q3. Look, loads of knee room. Headroom's good as well. Just so you know, that seats in my usual driving position. I'm 179 centimetres tall, so most adults will be fine. Even people over 6'4 will be okay back here. Now, the batteries for this car are underneath the floor and often with electric cars, that means that there's not much of a distance between the seat base and the floor, but it's actually all right here. You don't feel like you're in a stress position. You can sort of stretch your feet out under the seat in front, but it is quite low, this seat, though I have got it slammed. If the person in front has it raised up, you'll be able to do that even better. The floor itself is completely flat and you've got quite a wide middle seat, so it's going to be all right for carrying three people in the back at once if you need to. And if you need to carry child seats, look at this, the Isofix covers. Quite clever, they just slide up out the way, so you don't have the removable ones which you can lose. And there's quite a bit of a distance between this seat and the seat in front, so you won't have to move the front passenger seat forward to fit in one of those big rear-facing child seats. Now, if you haven't got someone sat here, you can of course fold this down and, yeah, that's an annoying thing with the old armrests having these cup holders that aren't covered because you can't then rest your arm on it, which is the whole point. If there is no-one sitting there, you can also fold this down for through-loading if you need to go to people and longer items if you're going skiing. Not sure you're going to be driving your EV all the way to the Alps, maybe you will. In terms of other areas of practicality, there's nets here, there's door bins here which are quite large, and then these extra door bins here. Brilliant idea, that is awesome. You've got those in the front as well. Now, let's check this out while we're here. Will the rear window go all the way down? Come on. Yes, it will. I like that feature. Wait a minute, don't want that so much. This is scratchy plastics here, whereas in the front it's soft touch. On the bigger e-tron, which is more expensive, soft touch all the way in the back. Other than that though, the quality back here is nice. And look, you've got some connectivity down here, two USBs, 12 volt, and this particular model has the tri-zone climate control, so you can actually alter the temperature here in the back separately to the front. Overall though, it's pretty good. Now you might think, oh, it's a bit dark and dingy though, isn't it? Because of all this like black plastic and stuff. It's not too bad because you've got big rear windows, but if you want a lighter interior, maybe you'd prefer the VW ID.4 because you can get light interiors with that. In fact, if you want to see my full in-depth video review of that car, yeah, you know what to do. Click on the pop-out banner up there, go watch it. Right, let's check out the boot. Oh, look, we've got an automated tailgate. Well, we should have really, shouldn't we? It's an Audi. Now, the boot capacity, it's big, nice square shape. You've got a volume of 520 litres. It's enough. You need a bit more though. Check out the Skoda Enyaq because its boot capacity is 585 litres. In fact, if you want to see my full in-depth video review of that car, click on the pop-out banner up there. If not, stay with me. There's not really a load to lift stuff over, so it's easy to slide things in and out. I want to show you this. You've got some more storage underneath and there's room for the parcel shelf and your electrics. That's good. There's also some other areas you can store stuff here. You've got a 12-volt socket, place to hang stuff off, tie-down points. And if you need to carry bigger items, you're just going to be folding down the chairs like that. And because the seatbelts are held in runners, they don't get snagged on the seats when you fold them down. All very good, all very well thought out. And look, it's easy to slide things to the front like that. Impressive. You're probably thinking though, Matt, it's an electric car, so obviously there's more storage underneath the bonnet. No, there's not. There is some space under there, but Audi hasn't packaged it very well. They could have done something with it. They could have given this car a front boot, but they haven't. And that brings you on to five annoying things about the Q4 e-tron. This is a high-tech modern car, right? And this particular version is quite well equipped and expensive. It costs over 50 grand, the car I've got here. So obviously it's got all the cameras and stuff like that for reversing and parking. Well, let's see, I'm going to put it into reverse. No, just sensors. If you want the parking cameras, you need to get them as part of a comfort and sound pack, which also includes the adaptive cruise control, which will steer to keep you in lane and keep you safe distance from the car in front. Well, that should be standard. On a Tesla Model 3, you've got all-round cameras, you've got autopilot as standard. Typical bloomin' Audi, innit? The brakes make a weird creaking sound like old floorboards in a haunted house. Have a listen to this. That doesn't sound very modern, does it? Depending on how you hold the steering wheel, you can sometimes accidentally press the phone button with this part of your hand and then it will dial the first person in your telephone directory, which in my phone is a chap called Joe Achilles. So Joe, if you've had lots of missed calls from me, that's the reason why I'm not stalking you, honest. These shiny bits of trim may look cool, but when you're driving along, you get reflections just flickering away and then sometimes you think it's a car just in your door mirror at the corner of your eye, so you're looking across and there's nothing there. It distracts you. The positioning and size of these air vents is a little bit annoying because when it's a hot summer's day and you want to blast yourself directly with cold air from the ventilation system, you need to use these. And if you hold the steering wheel properly, your hands are in the way and you end up getting freezing cold hands. So you've got two options. One is hold the steering wheel like a complete and utter moron. Yeah, some people do this. If you're one of these, please hold the steering wheel properly. So you can do that or you can just accept it and then get frostbite in your fingers, but you may then lose a couple, which could be annoying when you need to write things down and stuff. Don't worry. There's still plenty to like about this car. Here's the Car Wow five core features. You can get this car with an excellent augmented reality heads up display and it will project arrows and stuff on the road as you're driving along. So you know exactly which direction to take. It'll even flash up warning signs on the lines in the road if you start to weave out your lane. Here's a clip of what it looks like. I hope you're witnessing the clip now. Audi's got the B roll for it. If not, we're probably showing you some pictures of something completely irrelevant. If you remember earlier, I was telling you there was something cool about the headlights on this car. Well, this is what it is. You can actually change the design of the daytime running lights between these four different options. Press the button and select which one you prefer. The regenerative braking on this car is so strong, it can actually slow it at point six of a G, which means that you don't actually ever really engage the friction brakes unless you need to really stop suddenly. In fact, the system can recuperate 145 kilowatts. Now the actual motor's power is 150 kilowatts. So if you think about it, it's about the same. So the car's braking force when you lift off the accelerator is the same as the acceleration force, just in reverse. As well as the usual leather covering for the seats, you can get a vegan friendly one, which is actually made up of recycled bottles. In fact, there's 26 bottles used in each seat. The key for us is something called Efficiency Assist. What that does is use a satellite navigation data to check out the route that you're going on, and it uses roadside recognition to optimise the use of your battery. It will also plan in your stops for charging so that you can do it in the shortest time possible. Right, let's talk about motors, batteries and charging. So the range kicks off with a 35 model that has a single motor driving the rear wheels. It puts out 170 horsepower. It comes with a 55 kilowatt hour battery pack. Now that'll give you a range of 208 miles. It only has AC charging up to seven kilowatts, and it can charge on a DC charger up to 100 kilowatts. Then there's this 40 model. It has 204 horsepower from its rear motor. It has an 82 kilowatt hour battery pack, which gives you a range of 360 miles. It gets 11 kilowatt AC charging and can charge on a directional current outlet at 125 kilowatts. Then there's the top of the range model, the 50 that has a motor at the back and at the front and combined you have 300 horsepower. It also has an 82 kilowatt hour battery pack, and that gives you a range of 298 miles. Like with the 40 model, it has 11 kilowatt AC charging and 125 kilowatt DC charging. So which version should you go for? Well, what I'm going to do is go on the car. I'm going to configure what I think is the best version of the Q4 e-tron. There we go. Got some offers back from dealers. And if you want to see what that model is and the offers, I'll put a link up there. Click on that. You can go check out what I configured. Right. Let's see what this e-tron is like to drive. Now I'm driving through a country club and golf course, and there's those raised areas to slow people down with cobbles and stuff. And the suspension does actually deal with it quite well. Bearing in mind that being the S line, it has lowered suspension over the entry level sport. It's a little bit more firm and of course riding on big wheels, but it still does a decent job at lower speeds. Visibility is pretty decent as well. There is quite a big blind spot, you might think by this, but this extra little bit of glass there really helps. And the door mirrors are huge. I'm just negotiating all the other cars in this big car park of this country club. And the steering is nice and light, but not too light. There's still some feel to it. I can put the car into sports mode, which will weight up the steering, but there's no point because, you know, who wants that? I mean, it's not a sports car, is it? It's a family SUV electric car. That doesn't mean that it will topple over when you encounter a corner. It actually handles pretty well. The batteries are low down the floor, so you've got a low center of gravity, which does mean that it doesn't lean too much in the bends. It's fine. It's sure footed, fairly planted. And of course, you've got the response of that electric motor. I mean, it's no rocket ship. If you want that kind of thing, you need a Tesla. Teslas are just quicker. In fact, you can see my full in-depth video review of the Tesla Model 3 by clicking the pop out banner up there. But this still picks up pretty sweetly when you put your foot down. Sorry, there's things rattling around in the footwell. I've got loads of snacks and stuff in there. Oh, dear. Let's check out the acceleration. Here we go. All right. That's the auto brake anti-crash sensey thingy because I got too close to the car that's filming me in front. Now, that was a good test of the suspension there. So that was a really nasty, broken up piece of road. And it dealt with it pretty well. You can actually get the car with adaptive dampers, and that's another very top specification version. I'd like to try with that. I bet it's even more comfortable. But without, it's fine. I'll tell you what, this car is quiet and relaxing. I love electric cars for driving around town. Really, really easy. And you can put it into B mode, which gives you a bit more regenerative braking. So you can drive one pedal a little bit more, though when you come to a standstill, you do need to actually apply the brake for it to stop fully. Anyway, here's a roundabout. Let's try it round here. It's pretty nippy. Obviously, that'll lead to my charge if I start driving like that too much. Let's try on a faster bit of road. So here we are, about 40 miles an hour. I'm just going to accelerate. Yeah, the pickup's all right. And as you're driving along at higher speeds, it's quiet. The sound proofing is really good on this car. Obviously, there's no engine whirring away, so you do pick up other sounds. And there is a little bit of tire noise, but actually, it's still very, very quiet. This will be relaxing to go longer distances. But it will be unless, of course, you're running out of charge. But how far can you actually go? Well, I actually took this car on a route earlier, about an hour or so, different roads, and I was so careful with the throttle and I averaged 3.5 miles per kilowatt hour of battery. And this car has a usable battery capacity of 77 kilowatt hours. When you do the math, that means that you can get a real world range out of this thing of about 270 miles, which is pretty decent. So then what's my final verdict on the new Audi Q4 e-tron? Should you avoid it? Should you consider it? Should you shortlist it? Or should you just go right ahead and buy it? Well, I reckon it's the best small electric SUV you can buy, though that is because we can't get the Tesla Model Y yet in the UK. But until we do, you should go right ahead and buy this Audi. I hope you all enjoyed the video. And if you did, then give it a like. And if we get enough likes, I'll make cameraman Lewis do a little dance for you in the next video. I will. Also, let me know what you think about this huge grill in the comments below. Is it completely pointless? Is it? Also, if you want to watch more videos, you click on those windows there. And if you'd like us to sell your car through CarWow, just click on that box there. You might as well use it. It's completely free.