• Rear-world fuel consumptionn very impressive
• New chassis and engines are untested
• Relatively standard warranty setup

What are the running costs?

Depending on the petrol variant you choose – Audi claims between 37.7 and 40.4mpg for the standard Q5 TFSI, which is largely dependent on specification and wheel size. For the SQ5, Audi claims 33.6mpg.

Naturally the diesel is the better option, claiming up to 47.1mpg in its thriftiest configuration. After a 78 mile drive that included lots of twisty country roads, motorways and urban driving, we achieved around 39mpg without trying.

Servicing and warranty

Audi offers a relatively standard three-year warranty, but offers an expansion to four years/75,000 miles for £605 or a five-year/90,000 mile warranty for £1,415.

Reliability

This technically uses a new platform called Premium Platform Combustion that is shared with quite a few models in the Audi range – but it’s quite a new platform. The engines are also newly developed, so there’s an unknown as to how they will behave long-term.

We’d argue, though, that the bigger concern is software and the infotainment technologies. While we haven’t experienced any glitches or hiccups with the Q5, we have had errors and failures in cars that run the same systems – the A5 and Q6 E-Tron.