Audi E-tron Sportback
Mileage 1400 List price £80,675 Target Price £75,678 Price as tested £84,795 Test range 230 miles
IMAGINE IF YOU stopped to ll up with petrol and couldn’t pay with cash or a credit card. Instead, you had to download a glitchy phone app, or to have pre-ordered a special pump access card and linked it to an online payment account. Oh, and imagine if you needed to have different apps or cards to use the petrol stations of different fuel brands.
I’m guessing you’d think it was ridiculous, yet I’m nding this is all too often the reality of electric vehicle (EV) charging in the UK, despite government advice that all rapid chargers built from spring 2020 onwards should allow contactless credit card payments.
The fact that the chargers of some companies seem to spend more time broken than working can add to the frustration. And many rapid chargers are positioned directly ahead of where you park – great if you have an EV with a socket in its nose, but not if you plug into the front wing, as you do in my Audi E-tron Sportback, because then it means stretching the cable over the bonnet and praying it doesn’t scratch the paint.
Fortunately, there are some honourable exceptions, with the Instavolt chargers I’ve tried being particularly impressive. I’ve never turned up to nd any of them out of order, you simply have to plug in and swipe your credit card to start receiving electricity, and the charging units themselves are positioned towards the corners of the parking spaces, within easy reach of the sockets on all EVS.
It’s a real shame all this isn’t the norm, because aside from the aforementioned charging frustrations, the E-tron is proving a joy to live with.the way it isolates you from the outside world, both in terms of its ability to soak up bumps and to shut out wind and road noise, is outstanding. And while many EVS seem to lose a couple of miles of range for every mile you cover, the E-tron’s range readout is very accurate, even at motorway speeds, so I never nd myself worrying that I’ll have to make an unplanned stop.
‘I never nd myself worrying that I’ll have to make an unplanned stop’