They say hopping between dirty charging cables on the street is the lot of Nissan Leaf owners. But at the city charging station, you’re far more likely to run into an expensive electric car. Unwinding your own cable in front of onlookers is the simplest way to show off who has the longest one. Unlike Tesla, the Audi e-tron carefully disguises itself as an ordinary car, so heading out to plug in is a necessary ritual just to remind yourself — and everyone else — what you’re driving. At least once every few days: the onboard computer promises a real-world range of 350 km.
First Impressions: The Virtual Mirror Problem
There might not have been a test drive at all. I wanted to return the e-tron after just ten minutes behind the wheel. The fashionable virtual mirrors — rear-view cameras feeding low-mounted door displays — are to blame for everything. The concept may be viable in theory, but Audi’s execution is terrible. It contradicts one of the most important rules of safe driving: look further and wider. The low-placed screens force you to lower and refocus your gaze, distracting from the road ahead, and peripheral vision is effectively paralyzed. I’m scared.
The sector covered by the camera isn’t wide enough for confident maneuvering, and you can’t widen it with a simple head movement. It turns out that controlling your surroundings visually plays a critical role in feeling safe in traffic. I’ve heard from American sales consultants that local drivers have largely forgotten how to use mirrors, relying instead on blind-spot monitoring alone to change lanes. But what if you’re not so spoiled by electronics, and traffic on your roads is less orderly?
In my opinion, this option should be banned outright. It’s genuinely unclear how such a crude solution got certified for public roads. Still, I made myself live with it for a full day, putting myself in the shoes of a buyer who fell for the gadget — partly to test my own adaptability, and partly to make sure my criticism was based on real experience rather than first impressions.
Looking back, the e-tron didn’t fully win me over on this front. Yes, it’s possible to get used to digital mirrors, but familiarity doesn’t make them safer. You quickly develop the habit of glancing at the door screens, but the underlying feeling of restricted visibility never lets you fully relax — and that gets in the way of enjoying what is otherwise a surprisingly brisk, positive car. My advice: if you want to actually enjoy this electric car, skip the digital mirror option, or better yet, avoid the camera-equipped e-tron altogether.
Performance and Acceleration
Once you’re moving, the e-tron’s owner will inevitably want to hustle, because acceleration on the move is the most rewarding part of the driving experience. With no traditional gear shifts, overtaking happens instantly — no hitches, no noise, no drama. This 2.5-ton SUV completes the maneuver in one smooth breath. Having tested other electric cars, I already know the calming effect of silence: you can drive aggressively all day and still come away with more energy than in a combustion car, simply because the constant low-level noise of countless overtaking duels never wears on your ears.
Traffic-light launches are trickier. Starting with both pedals activates Boost mode, a kind of Launch Control: the power indicator jumps to the 50% mark while the e-tron is held by the brakes. The resulting jerk off the line is sharp enough that, with a bit of luck, you can hit the claimed 5.7-second 0-100 km/h time on a Racelogic timer.
Charging options on the e-tron include:
Key performance highlights:
Charging options on the e-tron include:
- CCS port (driver’s side): for DC fast charging, compatible with 50 kW dealership superchargers; the car’s electrical system supports up to 150 kW
- Type 2 port (passenger side): for AC charging up to 22 kW
How the e-tron Fits Into the Audi Lineup
It’s funny how, every few years, some Audi model manages to briefly reconcile me with a brand I generally find cold and short on soul. The e-tron does this even more effectively than the R8. That’s because the R8 always felt like a corporate anomaly, while the e-tron feels like a natural product of converging industry trends. It’s as if Audi systematically stripped away everything idiosyncratic from its lineup, distilled it into a single dispassionate standard, and used that neutral foundation to grow a genuinely competitive electric car for this pre-autonomous era.
It’s hard to rate the e-tron fairly without testing it back-to-back against the Mercedes EQC. But here’s a question worth asking: if you were shopping for a traditional-format urban electric SUV today — setting Tesla aside, since it plays by its own rules — would the Jaguar I-Pace even come to mind? I doubt it. And I suspect the Mercedes, despite its 80 kWh battery, will face the same uphill battle for attention.
Final Verdict
It’s frustrating when you can’t find a car you genuinely like within a brand’s lineup — it leaves you emotionally disconnected from the entire brand, or even the whole segment. Professional respect is one thing, but it rarely turns into the kind of connection that makes a reader’s heart resonate. What you really want is genuine enthusiasm and personal investment. So I’m glad the e-tron gives me a reason to talk about Audi again, and even argue about it a little. At the very least, about the choice of mirrors.
This is a translation. You can read the original here: https://www.drive.ru/test-drive/audi/5f590df8ec05c4285a000020.html
Published September 01, 2022 • 5m to read
