Styling
The differences here amount to the Q4 e-tron's Singleframe 'grille' now being body-coloured, instead of black as it was before, while both the front and rear lights are LEDs with configurable signatures; owners can choose from four different designs using the MMI touchscreen within. Such alterations have necessitated a slight clean-up of the bumpers on all models, and changes to the upright air slats in the Q4's chin on S line variants and above, but besides that it's as you were.
Alloy wheel sizes run from 19 to 21 inches in diameter, there are the same two bodies as before (regular SUV and then the 18mm-lower Sportback coupe-SUV with its sloping rear tailgate, making it slightly more aerodynamic and thus longer-range, model-for-model - the Sportback manages 0.26Cd versus 027Cd for the SUV, for reference), and finally some fresh colours appear: Plasma Blue, Volcano Grey and Sage Green among them. Overall, the Audi looks much the same as it ever has, so if you liked it before, you'll like it again now. And if you were indifferent to it previously... you'll remain indifferent to it. Drastically remedial, these updates surely are not.
Interior
Material quality inside the Audi Q4 e-tron is, as you would expect, largely excellent, but not uniformly so. The minute you get into the back of the car, you notice the standard of the plastics on the door cards is markedly lower than those in the front, exposing where Audi (and, by extension, the wider VW Group) has kept the costs under tight fiscal control. But generally speaking, the Q4's cabin is a pleasant place to be.
As long as you like vast digital interfaces, that is. At most, there are four huge screens in here, although the augmented-reality head-up display is only part of the Technology Pack (and fitted as standard to the pricey Vorsprung), and the 12-inch Passenger Display - not visible from the driver's seat when the SUV is in motion - doesn't appear to be a specifiable option in the right-hand-drive range, coming only on the Vorsprung trim. But you will get at least the 11.9-inch Virtual Cockpit cluster and 12.8-inch MMI infotainment touchscreen on all Q4s, these housed in the same giant dash-top construct.
What that does mean is that the Q4 e-tron has lost its physical climate controls. They're now integrated into the screen, which means the Audi is slightly less ergonomically correct than it once was. As a bonus, though, the steering hexagon of the older cars seems to have bit the dust, and the item you get instead - certainly in our test car in Germany - is mercifully round, albeit it has two lumps at the four and eight o'clock positions of the rim that are like vestigial remains of evolutionary dead-ends. The sort of steering-wheel equivalents of the coccyx and appendix, if you like.
Practicality
It goes without saying that headroom in the back of the Q4 e-tron Sportback is slightly less accommodating than it is in the rear of the equivalent Audi SUV, but in either vehicle there's plenty enough space for tallish adults to get comfortable. Legroom, for instance, is particularly generous and if it weren't for those subpar plastics on the door cards, sitting in the back of the EV would be just as rewarding as being installed up front.
Boot space is, weirdly enough, marginally better on the Sportback than the SUV with all seats in use, at 527 plays 515 litres. Drop the handy 40:20:40 split-folding rear row, however, and the SUV fights back, offering 1,487 of outright capacity compared to the Sportback's figure of 1,460 litres.
Performance
The same powertrains as used in the pre-facelift Audi Q4 e-tron are deployed in the updated car, but the rear motor is now the APP350 that brings with it newly developed power electronics, efficiency-boosting silicon carbide semiconductors, upgraded software functions, and optimised DC-voltage management with reduced transmission-friction losses.
That, in the simplest possible terms, means a bit more range than before. The SUV can do 269 miles as a basic e-tron, while the e-tron performance ups that to 352 miles, and the flagship e-tron quattro performance drops back ever so slightly to 330 miles. Due to that already-mentioned superior aerodynamic form, the Sportbacks increase all of these numbers to 280, 360 and 338 miles accordingly.
The reason the two higher-spec Q4s go further to a charge is because they utilise the larger 77kWh NMC lithium-ion battery, while the basic single-motor, rear-wheel-drive e-tron has a 59kWh unit. Charging speeds are also marginally increased on the quattro, from 175kW DC to a new peak of 185kW, while the e-tron takes in 160kW and the e-tron performance 165kW. Any way you cut it, a 10-80 per cent battery charge at the fastest potential rates takes between 27 and 29 minutes. On a typical domestic 7.4kW AC wallbox, you'd be looking at eight hours for the 59kWh car and around 11 hours for the 77kWh car to perform a full 10-100 per cent top-up.
As to the power accompanying these battery packs, it's all the same as before. The base Q4 has 204hp and 350Nm, allowing it to go from 0-62mph in 8.1 seconds, with a top speed limited to 99mph. The next model up, the Q4 e-tron performance, is still RWD like the entry-level version, but the bigger battery sees power and torque climb to 286hp/545Nm. That brings the 0-62mph time down to 6.6 seconds, while the top speed increases to 112mph.
It's the same V-max for the only dual-motor AWD Q4, which gains Audi's most fabled badge as the quattro performance. The 0-62mph time drops to 5.4 seconds, though, because the power is up to 340hp and the torque remains the same 545Nm from the rear motor (the front adds another 134Nm, but the manufacturer doesn't see fit to lay official claim to a peak of 679Nm). And if these stats from the quattro all sound familiar, then know that you're probably thinking of the
Skoda Enyaq vRS and
Volkswagen ID.5 GTX, which have the same numbers.
In practice, you won't need much more pace than that served up by the basic car we've sampled here. It's acceptably brisk and smooth in power delivery, and the regenerative braking on offer is nicely calibrated. Of course it's not quick, but you'd be hard-pressed to call it outright slow either, the Sportback's kerb weight coming in (just) the right side of two tonnes. We did briefly get to drive an SUV quattro performance with the 340hp motor, but as we were terrifically late for a flight home and spent most of the drive panicking, we can't remember anything about it other than reckoning it was a decent overtaker on two-lane roads, and that a 112mph limiter - of no consequence one way or another here in the UK - suddenly becomes a right blinkin' annoyance when you're on the Autobahn and butting up against said restrictor as you hurtle desperately in the direction of Munich airport. Ahem.
Anyhow, back to the Sportback. One thing we can really commend with the Q4 is that it is properly efficient in the real world. With some Autobahn cruising (not at 112mph, mind, but certainly running quicker than 70mph for prolonged periods), the e-tron managed a deeply impressive 4.1 miles/kWh over the first 50 miles of driving. It did later dip to 3.7 miles/kWh, but in its defence we were driving it on a sweltering day in Germany so its air-conditioning was working overtime to keep the cabin cool.
Ride & Handling
The real strength of the Audi Q4 e-tron is its marvellous ride comfort and rolling refinement. We drove the equivalent of a base-grade Sport model in Germany, which should come on 19s here in the UK, but it had been treated to a set of 20s. And yet the Q4's ride was always supple, sweetly controlled and comfortable. Similarly, rolling refinement is excellent, with hardly any tyre, wind or suspension noise to report, either when the Audi was picking its way around towns and lumpier roads at slower speeds, or monstering along the Autobahn at an indicated 160km/h and more.
In traditional Audi fashion when it comes to its more mundane motors, though, the Q4 e-tron is not in the slightest bit memorable to drive. Its handling is clean and composed, and because there's no combustion engine up front then you don't get a lot of the dreaded understeer in realistic use. Yet the chassis doesn't feel in any way playful, or rear-driven; in fact, the base-grade car feels more AWD or even led from the front at times. Sure, impeccable comfort and quietness are key development parameters for everyday electric SUVs like this, and Audi delivers comprehensively on those briefs, but if you're looking for any sort of meaningful driver engagement whatsoever from your zero-emission family-mover then you'd get more joy at the wheel of a
BMW iX1. And that rival is by no means scintillating to drive, either.
Value
Our biggest problem with the Audi Q4 e-tron is that you can get the same 'electric skateboard' underpinnings for a lot less with any of VW, Skoda or Cupra. The ID.4, at the time of writing, kicks off at £36,995, the Enyaq £39,250 and the Tavascan - which is a coupe only, remember, so only comparable to the Audi's Sportback, which commands a £1,900 premium spec-for-spec over its SUV alternative - starts from £39,995. The Q4? It's at least £46,260. And that's for a 204hp, 59kWh rear-drive SUV in basic Sport trim.
The minute you start digging into the S line, Black Edition and Vorsprung trims, the price begins to quickly rise. As we've already said, the Sportback needs almost two grand on top of an SUV (so it's more than £48,000 in all specifications). And if you want the e-tron performance, it's £50,960, while the Q4 e-tron quattro performance is a whopping £55,960 at its cheapest. Sure, it might look comparable to the likes of the iX1/iX2, the ageing Mercedes EQA and the
Volvo EX40, but it doesn't seem to deliver much over and above what the other, cheaper VW Group products to which it is related can do in the first place.
Verdict
You can argue one way with the Audi Q4 e-tron and say the German company didn't need to do a lot with its compact EV to rectify any glaring issues - so it hasn't. And that's fine. But you're paying a significant premium for the Q4, over and above the likes of the ID.4, Enyaq and Tavascan, and from the driving experience we've sampled then we're not entirely sure precisely what it is about the Audi that justifies that additional cash, save for badge snobbery.
It remains a quiet, comfortable and technologically impressive EV, the Q4 e-tron, yet we wouldn't say it sets new parameters in any one discipline that might elevate it to the status of class-leader. If the carmaker had just been a little bit more daring with this midlife facelift and tech update, bringing some fresh facet of the Q4 to the fore, then we might consider it more favourably. As it is, this is just conservative competence in electric SUV form.
