I saw an advertisement on facebook about the Audi etron ‘Visit the Charging Station Unleashed and preview the all-electric e-tron in person. Electric has gone Audi.’ inviting people on September 19th to 90 Broadway, promising a newly erected charging station. So I parked my Model 3 across the street and went to take a closer look:

It was a cool event with some free candy and swag, showing parked electric Audi cars.

No test drives, I was especially hoping to see the e-Tron in action, but according to the technical sales person I talked to, it’s a european model, which can only charge on L2 charger because CCS standard in Europe has a different contact layout than the US one and is therefore incompatible, and they don’t give test drives because of that. They would have driven it to Tahoe, arrived with 7 miles of range, charged it back up and drove back down to SF arriving with 95 miles of range left. So the EPA may come in around 200 miles of range.

Also when asked about how much kW charge-rate they actually see when connected to that new charger, they say 90% full in 30 minutes, car max is 150kW rate, battery size is 95kWh. Pressed on if they plugged it into the 350 kW charger and what it would display it turns out the location actually does not have enough power to run the 350kW charger so it was more of a proof of concept (mockup?) than a usable thing.

The cars on display looked like cool concept cars, while the eTron was supposed to be pretty close to what production what would look like:

The technical sales person showed me the eTron, we sat in it and played with the controls, nice 360 cameras, software still somewhat unfinished and not super responsive.

Its obviously still rooted in legacy carmaker engineering, for example you cannot turn on the AC unless you first press the stupid ignition on/off button that Tesla got rid of in 2012 when they introduced the Model S. I hated that in my 2015 VW EGolf too, that I thankfully was able to trade for a Tesla Model 3 in 2018. I hope eventually legacy car makers get the memo that improved workflow is more important than saving old concepts over into the new age for the sake of familiarity.

Even after the AC was turned on, it was not very effective and did not cool down the car very fast. The comment of the sales person was, that maybe its in power-save mode since the battery range was showing only 59 miles. Hopefully that is something that can be fixed before production, there is no reason why you should not be able to cool down your car with still close to 30% of charge left.

The navigation does require quite a few steps to get going, but once it got the route it does show where to charge and for how long, sadly the display is too small to see the full itinerary. Note that somebody had sun lotion on their hands and the touchscreen had white streaks from it that are distracting below, otherwise the brightness and antiglare high contrast display was excellent.

The navigation said I could not go all the way from SF to LA yet because it did not know about enough charging stations along the way. The ones it picked were L2 only and so the charge times recommended were multiple hours long.

The CCS port looks a lot better than the jaguar i-pace, i.e. blends better with the rest of the body panels, and the combo portion cover folds down instead of dangling down like an air-matress valve cover as is the case for the i-pace (orange picture):

The frunk is bigger than the jaguar i-pace but much smaller than model 3, s or x. Probably too shallow for even just a standard piece of carry-on luggage.

You can tell its legacy car design with all the stuff exposed in the frunk, too.

For comparison: Model 3 (gray) and i-pace (orange):

The trunk seems less deep than model 3, basically seems like less space overall. A big chunk of it is taken up by an audio speaker.

The car had a thin sounding radio but no streaming service, however it does have a still-empty app-store, so you can pay for and install those things later from inside your car entertainment system.

For now it assumes you want to use your phone for these things via apple car-play integration.

In addition it will have alexa as a personal assistant in the car, so you can say ‘its too cold’ and it turns up the heater.

The sales person also said they have over the air updates so things get better over time tesla style. He also claimed that for europe they would already have level 5 autonomy, mostly would be a regulatory problem at this point. I am not convinced of that, but will look it up.

He basically said all the hardware needed for it including lidar would be in the car already, but lidar would only be looking to the front for long distance vision.

For the dashboard behind the steering wheel, there are different dash board configurations you can select, so each driver can have their own style of how information is displayed.

Both screens, the one behind the steering wheel and the one on the side seem to have a pretty good size and stunning contrast, much less glare than what I am used to from tesla. However its a pity those are separate instead of one big screen, i.e. when reviewing the itinerary of the trip the navigation figured out its too small to show more than 3 stops at the same time.

The suspension adjusts with the driver profile, if you want high or low, and it autoadjusts not only with speed but also with the terrain.

My conclusion: Hard to say without driving it first, but while this is no tesla, it should be a big improvement over the gas version of say the Q7. Audi-lovers will be happy to see their favorite brand start the transition into the age of sustainable energy based transporation, get the immediate electric torque and the convenience of charging at home over night instead of going to gas stations babysitting the refuel process all the time. They will also ove the typical Audi options like roof racks, backseat entertainment systems for kids etc that tesla does not yet offer. The software will hopefully improve by the time the first cars end in their customers hands.