Audi Q6 e-tron vs Mercedes-Benz EQE

The Audi Q6 e-tron is £390 cheaper to buy. Running costs are almost identical - about £176 a year either way, at 8,000 miles on an off-peak home tariff. Add 5 years of charging and the Audi Q6 e-tron comes out roughly £390 cheaper overall. These figures cover list price and home charging only - insurance, servicing, tyres and depreciation will move the real total.

EVcarsguide estimates a real-world motorway range of about 318 miles for the Audi Q6 e-tron and 281 miles for the Mercedes-Benz EQE - both below their WLTP figures, because sustained high speed is the hardest case for an EV. The Audi Q6 e-tron goes roughly 37 miles further between charging stops. A rapid charge to 80% takes around 22 minutes in the Audi Q6 e-tron and 32 in the Mercedes-Benz EQE, so the Audi Q6 e-tron loses less time at each stop. That makes the Audi Q6 e-tron the stronger long-distance car.

The two are within 22 mm on width, so neither is meaningfully easier to thread into a tight space. In a standard 2,400 mm bay that leaves about 461 mm of total clearance for the Audi Q6 e-tron and about 439 mm of total clearance for the Mercedes-Benz EQE. The Audi Q6 e-tron also turns in a 0.4 m tighter circle, which helps with U-turns and multi-storey ramps.

Over a 8-year ownership window EVcarsguide's degradation model projects roughly 84% battery health for the Audi Q6 e-tron and 84% for the Mercedes-Benz EQE. That is close enough that capacity loss should not decide between them. Both use NMC-type cells, so for daily use keep the charge limit near 80% to slow degradation.