Popular Mechanics (South Africa)
MOTORING:
The world’s marketers would have you believe that soon we’ll be whooshing silently in a veritable swarm of electric cars. Steady on … let’s drive one first.
We drove the audi e-tron through the abu Dhabi desert.
UNLESS YOU’RE SUFFERING from a debilitating irony deficiency, you’d agree that Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates is a neat place for Audi to host the first drive of its all-electric e-tron. The oil-obsessed nation is practically built on the stuff and you’d think driving a car that moves without it (not directly, anyway), or the sheer size of the Gulf region itself, would be a major hurdle. But, in truth, it feels like there’s something of a crusade going on – one to rid the world of internalcombustion vehicles altogether, perhaps. If the Audi e-tron can succeed here, it can succeed anywhere.
Our jumping-off point is outside of Abu Dhabi in Masdar City. It functions completely off the grid and has ready-built chargers, so the e-tron gets its all-important power fix before the off. At first glance, it’s kind of neither here nor there, an overlap between a Q7 SUV and an A6 Allroad. Then you consider Marc Lichte’s nuanced design. Subtle in places, edgy in others, it makes a concerted effort to honour existing forms while underlining futuristic detail and incorporating sophisticated aerodynamics. The obvious bits are the triangular shapes, flow-optimised wheels, LED DRLS and wraparound one-piece tail-light cluster, but it’s the prominent body cladding between the front and rear wheels that highlights this as a new-age Audi with a floor full of batteries.
With them powered up 100%, 500 km of diverse driving lies ahead, with a 150 kwh fast charge at the halfway point to replenish 80% of the battery in 30 min. Audi claims a 400 km cruising range, which should provide an angst-free 300 km zip to our first scheduled stop atop the Jebel Hafeet mountain pass, a spectacular stretch of switchback-riddled asphalt.
Climbing aboard, Audi’s first clean-sheet EV has a pleasingly gimmick-free interior and the practicality is undeniable, although the raised centre console and slim glasshouse do initially feel constrictive. Marc Lichte talks up the cocooning effect on the driver, but this is surely a symptom of stowing an entire ‘skateboard’ of batteries beneath the floor and having an electric motor at each axle. The battery unit is made up of 432 cells, weighs 700 kg, and measures 2 280 mm × 1 630 mm × 340 mm.
Being an Audi, practicality is aided and abetted by top-level digital tech with the TFT Virtual Cockpit ahead of the driver and two prominent screens positioned on the fascia – one with the emphasis on satnav/mmi, and the other configurable to preferences such as climate control or graphical tracking of energy flow. And of course there are the virtual mirrors, a world first for any production car. They not only look brilliant, but also offer a big aerodynamic benefit – they reduce the width of the car by 15 cm and the drag coefficient to 0.27. Fitted with conventional wing mirrors, Cd increases to 0.28, undoing the aerodynamic gains from the computer-controlled radiator ducts, flat underbody and long-edged roof spoiler.
Operating the e-tron is simple enough. The starter button, transmission selector and drive select all live in close proximity on the centre console as the only stand-alone buttons in the cabin. Hitting the starter summons the instrumentation/infotainment and with no ceremony or engine noise, your next target is the self-explanatory D, N, Rand P controls. The car is still to be fitted with its governmentmandated low-speed warning sound to alert pedestrians and animals to its presence, so less attentive onlookers get the fright of their lives as the convoy glides noiselessly out of Masdar City. Later, an Audi engineer plays us the sound it’ll eventually be fitted with – it sounds remarkably like a small V8. Bonus!
On large swathes of motorway, notable in these parts for a 140 km/h speed limit, the e-tron is extraordinary, because I simply don’t need to drive it. Adaptive cruise control and lane-keeping assist pick up the slack in supremely relaxed fashion, with little to distract from conversation with passengers and maintaining a beady eye on the cruising range/ state of charge. I have to say, however, the virtual mirrors do take some getting used to. The cameras feed images to two digital screens on the inside of
the doors, but they’re positioned below where your eye naturally falls to check them and it takes a concerted effort to drop your view. Plus, it takes time to trust that the image contained therein has no blind spots, because, try as you may, adjusting your line of sight doesn’t alter the camera’s image. Duh.
From the outset, the range read-out has stayed constant at around 350 km as the kilometres have rolled off. But off the motorway, I forget the range for just a moment and toggle Drive Select from Efficiency to Dynamic to unleash the drivetrain’s paciest setting. Fed by its 95 kwh lithium-ion battery, the two electric motors are nearidentical, generating 125 kw up front and 140 kw at the rear, for better traction and balance. Together in Boost mode their total output is 300 kw and 664 Nm. This will see you from 0–100 km/h in 5.7 seconds; out of Boost mode, you’ll achieve 6.4 sec, but only until a limited top speed of 200 km/h, because the energy use at higher speeds is simply too high.
With Jebel Hafeet upon us, the hills come alive with the sound of … precious little. Except the murmur of hot, fat rubber on tarmac. While its handling ability is of purely academic interest in the greater context of electric mobility, I am fascinated to see how two-and-three-quarter tons of fully loaded EV will handle a road that is quite clearly a driver’s paradise, with rubber elevens charring every hairpin as if Ken Block has just gone all Gymkhana on it. The answer is, only as dynamically as you make concessions for. The battery’s unique position in the long wheelbase adds enough weight to flatten road imperfections, but any benefit of a low centre of gravity is offset by sheer weight. Turn-in is urgent, and pitch and roll neutralised, to some extent, by the air suspension, but if you unleash instant punch from the electric motors, you can be left lurching midcorner if you’re greedy with the throttle.
This brings the axle-by-axle torque vectoring into play, where an inside wheel is braked and the outer accelerated to keep you in line. Clever electronics can adjust drive from the motors in just 30 milliseconds, 50 times faster than a conventional mechanical quattro. With all this intervention going on, the e-tron doesn’t major in driver involvement. Feedback from the steering, brake pedal, chassis and electric motors is minimal. It’s as if it’s saying: ‘I’m clever, so you don’t need to be.’ And on balance, that’s absolutely
spot on, because once we’ve summited the mountain, we head back down to test something far more relevant – brake regeneration.
Operated via paddle shifters, there are three levels to the motors’ recuperation force. True EV pros love the one-pedal feel, never wanting to call on hydraulic brake force that’ll waste energy. The drive up wiped out 25 km of range, but purring back down again regenerates eight. Nevertheless, as far as the complex drive monitor is concerned, we’re running low – just 32 km left in the ‘tank’ – it suggests we find a recharge point, sharpish. Unsurprisingly, the satnav doesn’t pick up too many public chargers in the oil-loving Emirates. But thankfully, Audi’s 150 kw fast-charging demonstration isn’t far off.
In that respect, this hasn’t been your typical EV drive, because the dreaded range anxiety has been absent, the route carefully calculated within the car’s range remit. Although it’s early days for its Q4 introduction, Audi SA is likely to offer three charging solutions: Compact home charging – up to 11 kwh, which’ll recharge the battery in eight hours; Connect home charging – up to 22 kwh that can be controlled via the myaudi app and takes roughly half the time to recharge, or four hours (Eskom electricity prices fluctuate, but we estimate a full 95 kwh recharge would cost between R300 and R350). And should Audi SA follow the lead from overseas with the 150 kwh fast chargers, they’ll be accessible with an e-tron Charging Card, or activated via a QR code on your smartphone after registering on the myaudi app, with charging automatically billed each month.
If we were to level any criticism at the e-tron, it’d be that the virtual wing mirrors need refinement, and Audi should further explore lightweight componentry beyond the vehicle’s basic aluminium-andsteel structure. Something like BMW I’s Carbon Core would be highly beneficial to the e-tron package.
The unique challenges facing electrified mobility in South Africa are far greater, though. According to the Energy Institute of the UK, electric charging stations, at a total of 5 368, already overtook the number of fuel stations back in 2016. South Africa, by comparison, currently has just one per cent of that figure. As a result, SA’S shift from traditional internal-combustion vehicles lags behind the rest of the world. 46 522 hybrid/electric cars were sold in the UK in 2017, 3% of the total market, while over the same period, SA shifted 1 622 hybrid/electrics, or just 0.3%.
Nevertheless, in such a fast-evolving tech landscape, it would be foolhardy to take the blinkered view that electric mobility is simply not an option for South Africa. The hard work for OEMS to convince national government to better incentivise EVS may just be starting, but, if anything, the Audi e-tron is the technological tour de force that will get them charged up for the future in electric mobility.