• The S6 E-Tron replaces the gas-powered S6
  • It’s Sportback only, so far, for America
  • Prices? Still TBD for the U.S., with sales set for late spring or summer 2025
  • The gas-powered S7 gets updated, will soldier on

Fly for hours to the southwest from Madrid, along the coast of northwestern Africa, and eventually the dormant volcano Mount Teide pops up into view. One of many that formed the Canary Islands millions of years ago, the volcano hasn’t erupted since 1909, but it still looms ominously over its signature work—black ash scattered thickly, for miles around.

What’s a normal tourist do in one of the spicy new EVs from Audi on approach? Today we’re dodging influencers. Content disruptors? Ads in human form? However you know them, the black ash has attracted hordes of them. The Instagram girlies form a human set of pylons in the middle of the road leading up toward the mountain, hapless boyfriends enlisted as videographers and, also, pylons. They stand on the double yellow, space themselves out to crop the next one out of their frame, and tousle their hair for an epic selfie with the volcano as the backdrop. 

Never mind the oncoming traffic.

It’s here where I’ve flung the Audi S6 into very low geosynchronous orbit—well, at least a hundred kilometers from acceptable wifi. The S6 fleshes out Audi’s EV lineup when it gets stateside next summer, along with the milder A6 sedan—both of which replace the gas-powered A6/S6 that will live on after a mild renovation as the A7 and S7. Confused? Imagine being Audi’s internal naming guru.

While it plans its last gas-powered new cars for launch in the next few years, Audi’s busy spinning off new vehicles from VW Group’s new PPE architecture. That includes the huskular (yep: husky, yet muscular) new 2025 S6 Sportback E-Tron. This EV family includes the Audi Q6 E-Tron and Porsche Macan EV, too—and it’s outfitted for success with 800-volt charging, dual electric motors, an aerodynamically sleek shape, and so, so many digital displays inside. 

Audi wants to replace the gas-powered S6 in as straightforward a way as possible. To wit, behind its battery power, the new hatchback (which Audi calls a sedan) has an intricate design, solid dynamic appeal, and an efficient powertrain. It’s hot-swappable for the former car—but ends up being defined more by what it doesn’t do. It doesn’t make artificial noise (if you don’t want it to), it doesn’t put passengers above the driver—and most important of all, it doesn’t hesitate to make quick work of extraordinary roads. 

2025 Audi S6 E-Tron test drive review, Tenerife2025 Audi S6 E-Tron test drive review, Tenerife

Audi S6 E-Tron: Concept-car appeal

Audi has teased out the shape of the S6 for years, first when it previewed it in 2021. This car isn’t much different after translation into production. It still bears a plastic panel where a grille might otherwise be, with a four-ring logo lit in white LEDs if you like, flanked by split-LED headlights, all of which rest upon a low front end with blackout trim that forms a pedestal. The nose panel has hockey sticks that suggest actual grille louvers (or the recline mode on a business-class airline seat), and the front-end trim permits air to flow and wrap around the front wheels—one of the tricks that helps the S6 generate a low drag figure of 0.23. It’s sculpted down the flanks to trim some weight from tall door panels, ribbed in black trim beneath to contour and highlight those abs, and slips through the air at the rear with staggered heights for its fenders and a slim tail spoiler underpinned by LED lighting—again with the four-ringed logo, lit in red here instead of white.

It’s a Sportback, by the way. Audi will introduce a more formal-roofed sedan in time, but for now, this sleek shape’s the only one to come to the U.S.

Slip inside and the S6 reveals a wraparound panel of digital information that nestles the driver behind a combined 11.9-inch digital gauge cluster and a 14.5-inch touchscreen for infotainment, coded from an Android base. Spend a little more and Audi tucks a 10.9-inch touchscreen for the front passenger in among the wood, textile, and metallic trim that frames the dash. The central screen rests on slim air vents above a console with a saddle-style drive controller, a pair of cupholders, and a redundant volume knob. Audi dressed one of my test vehicles in a handsome woven trim—but in the U.S., quilted leather will finish the cabin a little more finely.

2025 Audi S6 E-Tron test drive review, Tenerife2025 Audi S6 E-Tron test drive review, Tenerife

Audi S6 E-Tron: 2-motor AWD hustles to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds

  • A6 Sportback E-Tron RWD, 362 hp, 0-60 mph in 5.2 seconds
  • A6 Sportback E-Tron Quattro, 422 hp, 0-60 mph in 4.3 seconds
  • S6 Sportback E-Tron Quattro, up to 543 hp, 0-60 mph in 3.7 seconds

Before we become grist for the influencer mill—aren’t we all, now?—the S6 influences me in the ways it can best. It makes for a fearsomely fast hustle from the coast to the mountains, with laser-quick flicks of power to erase other cars from the road, and from memory.

As my co-pilot and I slip from the beach town’s orbit and peel away into switchbacks, it’s the hulking weight of the S6 that makes itself known, twinned with a hushed uniformity of its driving responses. It presses its case, early and often, that this S6 ranks ahead of its gas-powered predecessors. Sure, gas cars seem less restrained and more lively because they emit all kinds of happy noises; we’re conditioned to them and expect them and tie them to our own emotional state. But while they’re more engaging in that way, they’re just…slower.

In the case of the S6, it posts up on the prior version with a 0-60 mph time of 3.7 seconds, which wells up from a 100-kwh battery pack under the floor (it’s deemed to have 94.4 kwh of usable energy), and twin motors that deliver all-wheel drive. Today’s gas car takes more than four seconds. The E-Tron is outfitted with artificial sounds that can amplify that hot-seat stoplight acceleration—but I turned them off whenever I could in its lesser drive modes.

Top speed clocks in at 149 mph, by the way, and the S6’s usual 496-hp peak can be tasered up to 543 hp in the launch-control mode that generates that drop-dead launch time. Curb weight, torque ratings, and range estimates—they’re all still to come, Audi promises. Once the coast clears the rearview mirror, I press the S6 E-Tron to the posted speed limits, and beyond. The bonging from the car’s speed-limit warnings has been silenced via its touchscreen interface, and the Drive Select button flicked to Comfort mode, where the blatty synthetic engine note has been quieted, too. 

2025 Audi S6 E-Tron test drive review, Tenerife2025 Audi S6 E-Tron test drive review, Tenerife

As it rushes toward the peak of a long-dormant volcano, I have many, many, many opportunities to test its one-pedal drive mode, accessed by pulling its drive selector into “B.” It’s for those of us who connote EVs now with that particular driving sensation—it feels like gas sounds, perhaps—but it also permits a few different levels of regenerative braking through its paddle controls. Those lesser amounts of regen play up the S6’s smooth motor engagement and extra margin of refinement, especially in its Balanced drive mode and particularly at lower speeds. Unlike some EVs, the motors in the S6 don’t click on and off with slight jerks.

But if you want balance and smoothness, maybe the lesser A6 is for you? As the dirt around us starts to render black streaks among the brown, I tap the S6 into its Sport drive modes. Sound barks through the speakers, the suspension firms up, and the steering weights up, without drama. It’s been so serene that the gain in bump-steer and ride stiffness get noticed—but don’t upset its powerfully composed demeanor. 

With a curb weight that has to be 5,500 pounds or more—but also with air springs and adaptive damping, the S6 can’t be ignored when it goes into this attack mode. It’s a very easy car to drive very hard. Bubbles in the road knock at its wheels, but don’t knock the hefty steering off track. The S6, which sticks to the road through Michelin Pilot Sports, 245/40R21s up front and 275/35R21s in back, just presses its way into corners deeply, and leans into its well of battery-generated torque to launch itself out of them and onto connecting straights. 

It’s the kind of luxury EV that eggs drivers on to empty the battery as quickly as possible, in other words. And when it’s spent, the S6’s battery can be recharged from 10-80% in as little as 21 minutes through its 800-volt system, which can reach charging rates of up to 270 kw. It can treat its battery as twin packs when 400-volt charging’s all that’s available, and top them off in parallel. At home, on a 50-amp 240-volt AC connection, the S6’s 9.6-kw onboard charger can refill it in about 10 hours. 

2025 Audi S6 E-Tron test drive review, Tenerife2025 Audi S6 E-Tron test drive review, Tenerife

Audi S6 E-Tron: Hatchback body, high-tech bona fides

  • Up to three digital displays in front
  • Rear-seat headroom could be your decider
  • Prices haven’t been announced, but bet on at least $80,000

Audi dubs the S6 E-Tron a sedan, but with its fixed glass and tail section lifting in combination to expose a covered cargo hold, it’s really a hatchback that looks like a liftback. We’ll split the difference, and call it a car. 

As a car, it works well. The S6 E-Tron sits about 194 inches long, which stacks up a little shy of the Tesla Model S—but rides on a long 116-inch wheelbase which helps with its sorted, planted ride. 

It’s not the most spacious vehicle in its size class, though. The front passengers have more than ample room outboard: I could paddle my hand between the very well-formed seats and smack the door panels along with the beat of the sound system’s throbbing Euro disco. They’re canted inward toward the console, so my knees made steady contact with the console. I heartily approve of one test car’s textile interior, too—but it’s a treatment we won’t get in the U.S. Instead, the front heated and cooled seats will be clad in quilted leather. An inch taller and wider than the outgoing S6, the EV edition has more than enough room for our 5-foot-8 editors, in front and in back.

2025 Audi S6 E-Tron test drive review, Tenerife2025 Audi S6 E-Tron test drive review, Tenerife

But at about 6 feet tall, with stubby legs and a long torso, I didn’t have head clearance in the back seat. I made contact with the headliner, and my knees stood above the seat bottom—and no doubt, I took up most of the view outward through the very slim rear window. The same observations rang true in the Q6 E-Tron I sampled last year, and in the Porsche Macan EV our team tested recently. There’s room for four adults, for sure—but where the taller ones sit could be the game, set, and match.

Cargo space of about 26 cubic feet rises to nearly 40 cubic feet when the rear seatbacks have been lowered. 

With a panoramic sunroof that can be darkened, section by section, the S6’s interior glows with high-grade materials as well as from those expansive screens in front. It’s alive at times, when all its safety warning systems—speed limit detection, active lane control, and more—cue their symphony of flashes, buzzers, and alerts, before the available head-up display casts arrows in the direction of upcoming turns. I imagine it would be even busier if U.S. cars got the custom light signatures and car-to-X communication of Euro models—or their camera side mirrors, which would not give me a clear view to the car’s left side through my progressive lenses. We get more bulky, less aero-clean standard mirrors—and clearer vision, as a result.

We’ll also get options such as a 20-speaker Bang & Olufsen sound system with headrest speakers—the Miata influences everything—and distinct sound zones for drivers and passengers. 

What we won’t get soon, but will eventually, is a price for the S6 Sportback E-Tron. It’s more than $80,000 in base spec in Germany and more than $100,000 fully optioned—and that’s before the much-speculated higher-performance RS 6 E-Tron that no one wants to talk about makes its way into reality. 

Until it does, the S6 E-Tron’s the influencer of the new A6 lineup. How it does it is simple: It does almost everything the previous S6 sport sedan did, only better in many, if not most, ways. 

If that doesn’t convince you, maybe it could just, you know, stand in the middle of the road and tousle its hair.

 

Audi flew us to Tenerife so that we could dodge Instagram influencers and bring you this test drive review.

Related Articles