So after owning my 2019 e-Tron for almost two years (as of next week), I made my first extended drive where I knew I was going to have to use an EA (or other third party) charger in order to get home. My son and I decided to attend last night’s Sox game versus the Brewers in Milwaukee. The distance was 96 miles from my house so 192 miles in total round trip. According to my calculations, I should have been able to drive this trip without needing to charge but it might have been a little tense on the way home.

Thus, I charged up to 100% instead of the usual 80% before leaving home and we found an EA charging station only one mile from American Family Field (formerly Miller Field) in Milwaukee. My SOC went from 100% down to 59% upon arrival into the Walmart parking lot where the EA stations were located. I did drive up there on ECO mode in order to preserve battery just in case I was unable to find a workable charger. There was only one other car (new Ford Mustang Mach-E) using one of the ten chargers but the app showed that only seven of ten were available. I must have picked one of the unavailable ones as my first choice because the unit failed to communicate so nothing happened. After a few minutes, I switched to another charger and used my Audi app to start the charge and within 21 minutes, we went from 59% to 100%.

We drove straight home after the game and my SOC, which went from 100% to 98% between that one mile from the Walmart lot to the baseball stadium, declined from 98% to 55% for the 98 mile drive home. This time I drove home on the Auto setting instead of Eco.

Overall, this drive gave me confidence in my e-Tron’s ability to go further than I thought was possible on highway drives. I’ve been using it only for local commuting for two years so this is the furthest I’ve ever driven at high speeds over an extended time. I could have done the round trip without charging in Milwaukee and would have had about 13% SOC left upon my arrival home but I would have been tense driving back instead of completely relaxed.

The other thing this drive did for me is to remind me that my EA credits expire in one year so I need to get moving to use them up!

 

I am in a similar position. I do more than local driving but most of it is still within the battery's range. Only occasionally, we stop at a DC fast charger. But this summer, we went on a road trip and took the E-tron to see how well it works. Everything worked very well, we just plugged in and it charged very fast. The car was usually ready before we were. We stopped at Electrify America chargers four times. We left on July 5 when EA still had free charging. So we only used our Audi credits once.

Glad to hear this experience made you more confident in your E-tron's ability. It did the same for me as we had no issues at all. I noticed that my Audi credits do not expire until 2023. I am not sure if they extended it? I also thought they would expire in 2022 since I bought the car in 2019. But the app shows 2023 now so they are good for 4 years.

 

Thanks for this reply. Because you pointed it out, I checked and you are correct, my credits also do not expire until July 2023 so I have two years instead of one to use them.

Overall, based upon this experience, I have more faith in my e-Tron than before. I have watched the battery drain when doing local short commutes and I immediately assumed that a long drive was out of the question. What I am now realizing is that electric motors and ICEs have some similarities in that they are more efficient when driven at constant speeds on highways rather than the start/stop nature of city driving. Thus the higher MPGs of highway driving apparently have a relationship to lower KwH/miles (more efficient energy usage) if I am thinking about this correctly.

 

Not really. ICE cars are generally less efficient around town, because no energy is recovered when decelerating. Also, fuel is used at all times the engine is running, not just when propelling the vehicle. ICE cars generally get lower MPG in the city. Conversely, EVs are much more efficient at lower speeds, stop-and-go driving, and especially downhill, where they can actually add charge to the battery. Your EV's range will be worst during highway driving, where the aerodynamic drag increases with the square of the velocity. For example, I've been able to drive my e-Golf (rated at 125) 175 miles around town, but I know that it will barely do 100 miles at highway speeds (fortunately my commute is 70 miles round-trip).

 

The other thing you might be noticing is that upon startup with a cold battery, your car will use a lot of energy to get things warmed up. So if you're only doing short trips, you'll see a big hit to effiicency for a few miles. Once the car is warmed up, it's business as usual.

The e-tron road trips really well. The only issue is EA reliability and while it's no where near perfect, it's constantly improving. Also, the E-tron's GOM is very very accurate and conservative. It's not like a Tesla where it drops like a rock and gives you false hope. It's actually way more sophisticated and you can rely on it. If the car says you have 20 miles of range left, you probably really do have 20 miles of range left (for better or worse!).

 

Good for you! Glad it was a positive experience.

I live in the city and tried a round trip to the Brat Stop / Mars Cheese Castle and ran into trouble two winters ago. My charging plan was the EVgo 50kw stations at Route 60 / Lake Forest Oasis, but I lost a lot of range due to the cold weather. I rolled into the southbound charger with 17 miles remaining, and the charger failed. Fortunately I was able to get off at Rte 60, drive northbound, and charge there... but not a fun trip with a 1 and 3-year old in the car when it was 0 degrees out. Oh, and the etron's heat stopped working and took 5 weeks in the shop.

EA really needs to put something in the Pleasant Prairie/Kenosha area.

 

EA is everywhere in cali. I personally have not found one that’s more the. 120 miles from the next. We travel from 1-2000 miles a month in a slow month. Have all the confidence in the world for the ev power of the Audi e tron