Audi E-tron
Electric SUV turns marriage carriage
MILEAGE 2455
WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT
To see whether Audi has raised the bar for electric vehicles with its advanced Jaguar I-pace rival
The Audi E-tron’s limolike qualities (and its brilliant white paint) made it an obvious choice for wedding car duties when a colleague’s daughter got married at Kew Gardens in south-west London recently – especially as a traditional horse and carriage wouldn’t have mixed very well with the required journey up the M3 motorway.
Come the big day, the bride couldn’t have been happier with her conveyance. The E-tron’s spacious interior coped easily with the sugar plum fairy dress, while the elevated seating position meant the bride made a serene, dignified entrance. Just as impressively, the E-tron’s excellent refinement ensured the bride’s sister and father could effortlessly maintain a steady stream of reassuring chit-chat and therefore
banish any lingering thoughts of a last-minute detour to the airport.
Like all electric vehicles, the E-tron has a regenerative braking system that uses the electric motors and brakes to harvest energy under deceleration and put it back into the battery pack, helping to eke out the range. The level of regen can be adjusted either automatically or manually via paddles behind the steering wheel, ranging from coasting with minimal drag through to strong enough to slow the car significantly when you lift off the accelerator. This can be a boon at times, especially around town, but in the E-tron’s case, it could be stronger.
In some EVS, such as the Nissan Leaf, the regen is so vigorous that you hardly ever have to touch the brake pedal. Audi suggests this is possible in the E-tron too, but I’m finding that even in its highest setting, the regen isn’t strong enough to bring the car to a halt without braking in the traditional manner. This, I assume, is to make the car behave in a way that drivers are used to from their previous non-electric cars, but you lose the benefit of full one-pedal driving in heavy traffic. I’m also finding it tricky to bring the E-tron to a halt without a lurch and creak if the ‘hold assist’ function is activated.
The indicated range has settled at around 220 miles with each full recharge, and it’s proving fairly trustworthy, with discrepancies of only about 10 miles either way between that figure and the distance the car can actually cover on a charge. And unlike in some smaller EVS, it doesn’t go into freefall at motorway speeds; the descent remains fairly linear. That’s been plenty for my needs so far, but sterner tests of its range – and more pertinently, its recharging times – are still to come.
On occasion, I’ve deliberately run the battery pack down to virtually empty, just to see how the car would respond. With 30 miles of indicated range remaining, a yellow battery symbol glows permanently in the digital instrument panel, accompanied by offers to find a convenient charging point. With just 10 miles’ range left, the battery symbol starts alternating with a little yellow tortoise symbol – a cute touch – and the car begins to cap power. I got as low as two miles to go before I lost my nerve, at which point the power had been reduced to 25%, although the car still felt surprisingly perky, at town speeds at least.
Following the fault we encountered early on with the emergency call function, the adaptive cruise control – part of the £1950 Tour Pack option – has now made itself permanently unavailable for use. It was working well at first; in fact, its ability to adjust the car’s speed correctly, not just on congested motorways but also through speed limit changes and on dual-carriageway roundabouts and motorway slip roads, was quite mesmerising. I’ve cleaned the radar unit in the front bumper and other sensors, because often it’s just grime that causes a temporary outage, but the cruise control is still refusing to work. I’m still waiting to hear how that might be rectified.