Audi has opened the order books for the new Q8... in its home market, at least. While the new flagship crossover won't reach US showrooms for another few months, the German pricing information gives us an idea of what to expect when it does. On the surface, the €76,300 price of admission translates to nearly $90,000 at current exchange rates. That'd put it smack dag in the middle of the 43 and 63-series versions of the Mercedes-AMG GLE Coupe. But with higher taxes in Germany, the straight conversion doesn't paint an accurate picture of US pricing.
More to the point, the Q8's domestic sticker price comes out pretty close to that of the Audi S6 sedan, a model which starts at $71,900 in the US. So when the Q8 hits American showrooms sometime in the third quarter of this year, we'd expect it to carry a price tag starting around $73k – significantly more than the $50k MSRP on a base Q7, and just a bit more than the Mercedes-AMG GLE43 Coupe (or a little less than the BMW X6 xDrive50i) with which it'll do battle. The new Q8 launches in Europe in 50 TDI spec, packing a 3.0-liter turbodiesel with a mild hybrid system – an especially potent combination that delivers a (relatively) modest 286 horsepower but a prodigious 442 lb-ft of torque.
That gives it a 0-62 mph time quoted at 6.3 seconds and a top speed of 152 mph. But given the reputation that the VW group's diesel engines have garnered in the US especially of late, we wouldn't count on that option making its way across the pond. A turbocharged gasoline engine of similar capacity (if not necessarily output) is set to feature as well, and will likely provide the motivation for the US version. The 3.0 TFSI available as the top gasoline engine in the Q7, for what it's worth, offers 333 hp and 325 lb-ft of torque – 47 more horses than the Q8's hybrid diesel, but 117 fewer lb-ft – for a 5.7-second 0-60 mph time.
