Sunday Drive: Audi e-tron
Friday, 21 June 2019
**AUDI E-TRON
Price:** $148,500 to $157,000.
Powertrain: twin electric motors, 400 volt 95kWh battery, 300kW/664Nm, AWD. 0-100kmh 5.2 seconds.
Body style: Five-door SUV.
On sale: July.
Left hand drive and on plates identifying home is 18,000 kilometres away, in the German city of Ingolstadt. And how much attention was paid to Audi's latest wonder wagon when I drove it?
You got it. Zilch. When import regs allow almost anything in, perhaps nothing surprises any more. Just another expensive extravagant Audi, right?
For sure, the e-tron is very much that. Yet as the brand's first full electric production car, it's also so much more: The start of a whole new chapter, the firm reckons.
**READ MORE:
* Five electric SUVs you will be able to buy very soon
* Twenty new Audi EVs on their way to New Zealand**
What I've been driving is not quite what we start to get from the end of July. Left-hook isn't part of the sale plan. Just that Audi NZ required cars for staff training, customer play and a dealership tour and Germany alone had the solution. This venture also leverages the firm's just-voiced determination to put 30 partially and wholly electrified models in circulation by 2025. Four are already signed off for NZ residency; more are considered. Fully electric R8, TT or A8, anyone?
If they all look and drive as the e-tron does, resistance will be futile. Those committed to following an electric future in big dollar style will find it smooth, plush and bewitchingly low-key yet cool. Audi's belief about EVs needn't looking different for the sake of it is a winning factor. Design familiarity with its Q-badged SUVs just has to make it easier to make the jump.
E-tron's tech allure is huge. Maybe those market-first pod-mounted cameras on the doors to replace traditional wing mirrors, these displaying on compact OLED screens on each door inner could be considered faddish, but it also has semi-autonomous drive features designed to receive Tesla-style 'over the air' updates.
A luxury pack at a shade under $13k buys all the options you could imagine yet even when going light on embellishments, the interior layout, operability, comfort and ambience is current era high-end Audi 101. The dominant features of the Virtual Cockpit and two screens in the centre console are much like those in the Q7 and Q8.
Like the Q8 it seats five, looks most comfy for four, and there's no seven-seat option at this stage. It has loads of leg and head space and is big on practicality, with a 605-litre boot and ability to tow (up to 1.8 tonne). No surprise build quality is superb.
Adaptive air suspension, LED headlights, 360-degree cameras, keyless, leather trim, electrically-adjustable and heated front seats, 19 or 20-inch wheels and, in NZ spec (but not on these cars) charging points on both flanks. Advanced implements an S-Line interior upgrade with sports front seats and a few more fineries.
Patently the real nature of a model that achieves quattro expectation in placing an electric motor on each axle – the rear slightly more powerful than the front (torque split roughly 40:60) - and has a 700kg, 432-cell 400-volt 95kWh under-floor battery in between becomes clear when driving.
A short public road flit gave no chance to get sense of the validity of the claimed 5.2 seconds' 0-100kmh or the anticipated range of 420km. Capability of recharging in 40 minutes demands 150kW chargers yet to be installed, but they're coming.
Power is at 300kW and there's a massive 664Nm of torque to call on and just as well. At 2490kg, this thing clocks 300kg more than i-Pace and is 150kg up on a Tesla Model X 75D.
Does that fat ruin the phat? The jury's still out. Our drive lent impression it has a reasonable snap but a route offering just enough motorway to get a hint of what it's like at 100kmh road speed then otherwise restricting to 50kmh territory was no test of athleticism.
What did impress was the quietness and smoothness and also how it's not THAT much different to any other Audi in general ambience and attitude.
Anyone who has driven an EV before will find it easy to adapt to, but those stepping from an orthodox Audi surely won't be too tested, even by the nuances.
Steer clear of the geek stuff like displays showing what difference to range leaving the heater off can make and you're left with just the challenge of how to get best result from the regenerative braking. Even there the car does its best to assist. Paddles behind the steering wheel allow you to increase the recuperation through two levels yet the system is clever enough to gently start the slowing for you.
It has all the Audi-usual driving modes, including off-road – which raises the air suspension by 35mm – and while the performance settings are more expressive than with a fossil- fuelled car (efficient is so sluggish you'd probably avoid using it leaving busy intersections, for fear of being too vulnerable to oncoming traffic) and alter-ego 'dynamic' a touch too vivid for some urban driving, the hallway point, called 'comfort', presents such a nice balance you'll likely just leave it in that default and settle in to enjoy the refinement, which is simply uncanny.