2019 Audi e-tron Prestige Owner Review

Owner Review

A luxury car that happens to have an electric drivetrain

The e-tron began its life as Audi trying to make their "best effort" luxury car, throwing everything they have at it to make the nicest vehicle possible, and then they put an electric drivetrain under it. It's better to understand it this way, because it's easy see the emphasis from Audi on the long list of comforts that were put in, from the very thick, highly adjustable seats, to the sillier functions, like a set of selectable (or deactivatable) fragrances built into the air conditioning. The ride is super smooth, with an enormous sense of power, all of the seats are super comfortable with abundant space, and the car is as quiet as a the inside of a refrigerator. 

As a prue electric vehicle, the specs don't impress as much: a 94kWhr battery, with 86 kWh addressable, yielding a typical 208 mile range. In practice, the number winds up being conservative, but there is no getting around the fact that it has a huge battery it doesn't use all of and doesn't go super far, because its per-mile energy consumption is just really high. The good news about the bad news, is that much of maneuvering around the battery usage was designed to give the e-tron one of the most impressive charging curves on the market - a flat 150kW all the way up to 80+%, so charging stops at capable stations are usually under 20 minutes. The result is that net trip times on long road trips are more competitive that you'd expect, and road trips themselves have a very laid-back, comfortable feeling.

Overall it's a wonderful car that will fail to impress people looking at the EV performance specs.