Audi e-tron – Review
Blueprint editor Johnny Tucker takes a test drive in Audi's latest plug-in hybrid, the A3 e-tron
There it is, that pang in the middle of the night. Londoners and regular visitors to the capital will recognise it, it's the 'did I pay the congestion charge?' pang.
But almost as soon as it hit, the feeling went away as I remembered the journey into Blueprint's office had been made in the new production model Audi A3 e-tron. From the name, you could be forgiven for thinking the German prestige car manufacturer was branching out into the vaping market, but this is actually, its latest production plug-in hybrid vehicle (that's an electric car with the back up of an engine to help charge batteries and extend range and sometimes performance). There's no congestion charge to be paid because its average CO2 emissions are just 35g per kilometre (a bit less than a tenth of an equivalent petrol engine).
This car is essentially everything you'd expect from the A3 - tried and tested sporty-feel, premium, family hatchback with two doors, or four doors in the saloon. It's a mix of performance and efficiency and that's exactly where the e-tron comes in right on brand.
It's nippy for sure (0-60 mph in just over 7 seconds), with a top speed of 138 mph, although it's front wheel drive only. On the other side of the coin, on just one tank of petrol you can drive for 584.1 (very precise) miles. Ignoring the 1.4l petrol engine and using the electric motor alone, will give you a range of just over 30 miles.
Driving this car involves a leap of faith for anyone not used to driving electric. At a standstill, running purely on the electric motor, the dashboard is alive, but the car appears completely dead. There's no engine noise, there's no vibration. It is eerily quiet and you're not really sure it's going to do anything when you press the accelerator. It does though, and it's still eerily quiet, little to hear except the wheels rolling on the tarmac. Perhaps that's why, annoyingly, the radio comes on as a default every time you start up -- to give the interior a little life!
Driving, it feels very responsive if not super sporty and the controls are extremely intuitive: an hour or so's fiddling with every button on the onboard computer and you've pretty much got it sussed.
As a town family car it's possibly slightly overpowered for London where so many boroughs are moving to 20mph limits, and given the levels of traffic, a sustained 30 or 40 (where still legal) is a bit of a luxury. But that said, it's always nice to have a little bit of power at your toe tips when you need it. From the lights, 0-30mph is done in the blink of an eye, you look in the rear view to find the car behind you still preparing to enter the junction.
I never did get it out on the wide open roads, but instead made a pilgrimage to the brutalist Thamesmead estate, location for parts of Clockwork Orange and the newer Misfits TV series. Using my nose and signposts might have been better than relying on the rather adenoidal sat nav (think a female Ed Miliband telling you to turn to the left...) which tried on a couple of occassions to send me through some Crossrail hoardings across roads that no longer exist.
Driving around town, the electric charge gets used up surprisingly quickly, but then kicking in with the petrol motor also tops it back up quickly. As for plug-in charging, that was more of a hassle. Plugging into the house mains was not an option as, in common with many city dwellers, we park on the street (often a few streets away, in fact). So, hunting down charging points was the answer -- or so I thought. The first one I buzzed up to in a multi-storey was out of order. The second one in a supermarket car park took different charging cards from the two I'd been supplied with. My third and final effort was also a failure, but we can mark that down to human error as I'd left the charging cards in my other coat. Still, you get the idea, it's currently a bit of a pain.
But you can't put this at the feet of Audi and you certainly can't fault them for bringing in a true production, true thoroughbred vehicle, that ticks all the right boxes, while not wearing it's heart on it's sleeve (ie it's not an ugly old Prius).
So, who will buy it as there's so little to tell it from the regular A3? Regular A3s weigh in at £20-35,000, the e-tron is £35-£40,000 though there a £5,000 cash-back to be had from the government for buying a plug-in car.
Essentially, this is aimed at those with a penchant for the new (and very well appointed), who either have a strong, green agenda, or do enough miles to make that low consumption (and no road tax or congestion charge) work in their favour.
