Audi Q4 e-tron vs Volvo XC40 Recharge

The Audi Q4 e-tron is £245 cheaper to buy. Running costs are almost identical - about £160 a year either way, at 8,000 miles on an off-peak home tariff. Add 5 years of charging and the Audi Q4 e-tron comes out roughly £325 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 229 miles for the Audi Q4 e-tron and 220 miles for the Volvo XC40 Recharge - effectively matched, and both well below their WLTP figures because sustained high speed is the hardest case for an EV.

The two are within 2 mm on width, so neither is meaningfully easier to thread into a tight space. In a standard 2,400 mm bay that leaves about 537 mm of total clearance for the Volvo XC40 Recharge and about 535 mm of total clearance for the Audi Q4 e-tron. The Audi Q4 e-tron also turns in a 1.2 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 Q4 e-tron and 84% for the Volvo XC40 Recharge. 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. Both batteries carry a 8-year manufacturer warranty.