Shock of the new: Why I won’t soon forget the Audi e-tron

The big, watershed moments of your working life stick with you, indelibly, like mental chewing gum on the sole of your brain.

I remember – as a motorcycling evangelist who hated cars and assumed anyone who drove one was boring and predictable, particularly their desire to kill me – being genuinely excited about driving a car for the first time.

It was a new Subaru WRX and I was lent it by a kindly old motoring editor, who wasn’t quite kind enough to let me drive a Porsche, for one night. I fell madly in love, and even got up at dawn to drive it, strange behaviour indeed for someone who believes dawn is the witching hour and should be outlawed.

It made me realise that cars could actually be, in some tiny ways at least, as much fun as motorbikes, and put me on the path to writing about them, and eventually giving up motorcycles altogether, just in time to stop me from killing myself.

Driving the new Audi e-tron recently was not that significant. Driving a Tesla for the first time, after refusing to do so for a couple of years for cantankerous reasons, was the First EV Experience that will stay with me; the moment when I realised there was hope for the future after all.

Read our full review of the Audi e-tron 50 and e-tron 55.
UPDATE: Review of the tri-motor Audi e-Tron S and S Sportback

No, the significant moment with the new and very polished Audi was not when I was driving it, but when we stopped at Goulburn to charge it.

Each e-tron sold comes with a six-year subscription to Chargefox, meaning you never have to pay for your power, which would be pretty groundbreaking if a car company matched it with six years of free fuel for an ICE vehicle.

Audi had told us its e-tron 55 would recharge up to 80 percent from empty in just 30 minutes, or to 100 percent in 45, providing a promised range of 436km.

Now, I don’t want to suggest that all car companies lie, but they do tend to exaggerate, particularly when it comes to things like fuel economy or claimed range, and I must admit I was fairly determined to catch them out with some fibbing or at least flubbing.

From Canberra to Goulburn via backroads I worked the car as hard as I could, and even detoured off the drive route to give it a belting, hoping to drain the battery more than they wanted us to. And yet, when it was plugged into the Very Very Fast Charger, it actually did manage to take the promised 150kW charge (or very close, it hit 149kW and stayed there), a feat made possible by the use of a clever cooling system.

Most shockingly, though, it really was fast. I ate a sandwich, had a chat to the very interesting Chargefox fellow, and, when I strolled back to the car, it was 80 percent charged, in just 15 minutes. Ten minutes later it was at 100 percent, and I hadn’t even had time to get bored. This really was an acceptable amount of time to stop for, and probably shorter than my usual stop in Goulburn when trying to shove “food” into my children.

Interestingly, Mr Chargefox Man educated me to the fact that, in real life, you’d never charge your battery more than 80 percent, unless you really needed all your range. It’s not necessary, nor good for the batteries, he reckons. And trust me, he could talk about batteries and charging under eight feet of concrete.

Charging is so often the point at which electric cars either fall down or at least intimidate the uninitiated, but for me I’ll remember that day as the point at which I could really see the whole EV thing working. And the e-tron didn’t just reach its claimed range, in my test, it exceeded it.

The whole Audi EV effort is impressive, but one day, probably quite soon, we will look back and laugh at the idea of a car with a 700kg battery that’s 2m long, 1.5m wide and 30cm high. As the technology improves, EVs will get lighter and even more fun.

I will be interested to see if I also remember the Audi e-tron drive as the first time I tried a car with virtual mirrors, once they become ubiquitous. Personally, I hope not, because I found them entirely weird and impossible to get used to.