Audi has finally released the price tag for the e-Tron Quattro, and it’s a doozy. In the German market, the electric SUV will start at €80,000, or just a tick under $100,000 based on current exchange rates. Pricing and availability in other markets will be announced at a later date. There you have it, folks. If you want to get your hands on an e-Tron Quattro, you're going to have to break the bank.

Someone over at Audi has some explaining to do. The price for the e-Tron Quattro puts it in the ballpark of Tesla’s pricing scheme for the Model X. It’s almost $20,000 more expensive than the base Model X, which really doesn’t matter because the SUV’s real rival is the 100D, which costs $102,000 before all the incentives kick in. While we’re here, the e-Tron Quattro is also a lot cheaper than Tesla’s top-spec Model X P100D, which starts at $140,000.

In some ways, Audi priced its first all-electric SUV right around where you’d expect it to be. There’s just one catch. Audi has said in the past that the e-Tron Quattro's size would slot it between the Q5 and Q7, two of Audi’s vanguard SUVs that cost $41,000 and $49,000, respectively. Granted, there’s a difference in pricing a traditional SUV and an all-electric SUV, but is the e-Tron Quattro really worth almost double the price of a Q7? That $99,000 price tag is way higher than we expected it to be, even accounting for the anticipated incentives.

If you think about it, the Model X really isn’t what you’d consider a direct competitor to the e-Tron Quattro. The Tesla SUV is bigger and longer than its Audi counterpart so the e-Tron Quattro really belongs a level down compared to the Model X. It’s 95 kWh battery pack is also slightly smaller compared to the 100 kWh battery pack found on the P100D. Fortunately, the all-electric Audi SUV has a few things going for it, including an expected range of 310 miles. That’s something Audi can tell prospective customers who are interested in buying the SUV.

Still, it’s hard to wonder why the German automaker priced the e-Tron Quattro as high as it did. It’s not going to matter in places like Norway where there are already 3,000 orders for the model, but in other markets that are still dipping their toes into the all-electric car segment, it might be a tough sell to offer an electric SUV that’s smaller, shorter, and a little down on power compared to a Tesla Model X that has proven itself, at least in some cases.

References

Audi E-Tron

Read our full speculative review on the 2019 Audi E-Tron Quattro.

Read our full review on the 2015 Audi E-Tron Quattro Concept.

Read more Audi news.