Why we’re running it: Audi’s inceptive performance EV is a class act, but what’s it like to live with?
Month 2 - Month 1 - Specs
Life with an Audi E-tron GT: Month 2
Even during an inconvenience like this, our Audi delivers a surprising reward - 31 May
Three months into my stint with this electric Audi and preconceptions about how chaotic the relationship would be have mostly left the building. I am surprised by this; people who know me and my driveway-less, routine-less existence are surprised by this; even people who know me and my situation and own an electric car themselves are surprised by this. I’m simply not suffering as much as I feared – and they cheekily hoped – I would be. Or, indeed, at all.
The lack of torment is partly because, in the Audi, what you see on the range display is generally what you get. This gives you blessed certainty, and is especially true in the Efficiency drive mode, which essentially lengthens the throttle, slots the rear transaxle into the longer of its two ratios and drops the air-sprung body into its lowest, least draggy ride-height setting. That last bit also gives the car an extra dose of crowd-pleasing stance, although it does render the underside of its Dolph Lundgren chin vulnerable to speed bumps.
Indicated range has improved noticeably in this warmer weather, and if I charge the 93.4kWh battery up to 100%, the car now shows about 265 miles. This is still some way short of what you would get in the bigger-battery BMW iX, but I can live with it. And I can live with it because public charging has mostly been okay, if also now quite busy.
Sure, almost no stations pump out electrons quite at the advertised rate, and at around 65p per kWh for ‘ultra-rapid’ apparatus, it isn’t cheap. But inconveniences have been minimal. Most of the time I arrive, wait five minutes, plug in, and 20 minutes later I’m off again.
Could you have an E-tron GT as your only car? Probably. Though it still wouldn’t be risk-free. I think the best approach would be to use the Audi as much as you like, but also have a petrol supermini lying about, for when life throws a curve ball and your otherwise slick slice of electric Vorsprung durch Technik has only nine miles on the readout after a big trip. A decent 2008-model-year Ford Fiesta is the same price as an option or two on the Audi.
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The Skoda it is then. How can a car be called a GT with a range of just over 200 miles, be required to base its chosen route of a limited number of unreliable recharging stations which will take far longer than you have any wish to stop there? Early electric cars made sense when their brief was to be replace daily drivers, not exotic grand tourers. The day will come when that is viable, I am sure, but it's not now.