We just returned home from our first road trip with the e-tron. Our trip was 576 miles round trip, from our home here in North Alabama (near Huntsville) to Dollywood and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park for a car camping trip. We were curious to see how well we'd fare tent camping out of the car. We have done this trip several times in the past 10 years with a combination of vehicles and camping gear, so we are pretty familiar with our gas car performance. For comparison, we have a 2019 InTech Sol Horizon and an olllld pop up camper (1989 Palomino Pop up which we reconditioned as a project during the COVID years). The trailers we pull with our pickup truck. We get on average about 9 mpg with the hard sided camper, and about 15 mpg with the pop up camper. Tent camping we have done both our truck and our Prius. The truck gets about 20 mpg normally on this trip without the trailer, and the Prius with its aging battery now gets about 37 mpg (we used to get 45 mpg with it when we first bought it). Gas is hovering around $4 currently. So, truck with big camper, 44 cents/mi, Truck with little camper, 26.7 cents/mi, Truck no camper 20 cents/mi. Prius 10.8 cents/mi.

Originally we had just planned to spend the night one night and drive back the following day, but added a second campsite stay at a Tennessee State Park we haven't been to to try it out at about the midway point. The outbound drive we stopped at Ooltewah, TN at an Electrify America charger at a Wal-Mart. Cost in this area is higher than normal for the region (this around Chattanooga all the chargers are way higher for some reason), and we camped the first night at Hiwassee Scenic River State Park. We played this trip fairly conservatively with our state of charges, especially since we were going to be in areas nowhere near chargers and these campgrounds had no electricity. We were pleasantly surprised to learn once we got to the state park that they had a Rivian charger free of charge! The ranger was there and said that Tennessee had an intiative to install public chargers (at least one, this one had two) at every state park. No one was there at the time using those, so we probably could have utilized that. They were 40A level 2 chargers, so would have been an overnight affair to charge completely. Anyway, we didn't use the charger here this trip since we topped up from 13-85% at the first charger we hit, that cost us $0.48/kWh using the Electrify America membership.

The next day we hit up another E.A charger at a Wal-Mart in Knoxville. This one we went from 41%-100% at $0.36/kWh. We went to Dollywood straight after this and charged at their public charger while we were in the park (a level 2 charger, probably 36A or so) run by Chargepoint... we topped up again to 100% here for 20kWh @ $0.30/kWh. From there we headed to our campsite at Elkmont campground. Remember, this is in the national park, and no public charging anywhere near by and zero power in the campground.

On the way back we hit up the same E.A. charger in Ooltewah up to 94% before venturing home. We arrived home with 16% left.

Our average going was 2.5 mi/kWh, coming back 2.4 mi/kWh. I drove less conservatively on the way back so not much surprise there.

So our cost/mile was about 16.7 cents counting home charging starting at home with 100%. We are tempted to install a hitch and do this trip again with our pop up camper. It is a pretty light camper by today's standards, less than 1500lbs, and a narrow body only 7 feet wide and lower than the e-tron roofline, so I expect it probably would be pretty decent match for the e-tron. Not much would hang out to catch the wind and only 16' from tongue to bumper. The extra stopping didn't bother us as much as we'd have thought since the ride was so nice and was nice to get out and stretch our legs. In any case, the Prius is the absolute winner on cost. But, the e-tron is the nicest to road trip in of the three.

 

Just measured the height and width of the pop up. It is 77” wide and about 54” to the tallest portion of the roof (roof vent), with similar ground clearance to the Audi when set to efficiency height.

brochure weight on this camper was about 1388 lbs. I haven’t measured it but options wise the only thing it has that the brochure wouldn’t account for is a small cabinet mounted window ac and a furnace. I’d add 100lbs for that stuff, and probably no more than 50 lbs of additional cargo. Folded there is simply not enough room to add a ton of cargo unless you are carrying gold bars. Haha. 1500lbs loaded is probably an accurate guesstimate.

 

Glad you had a good trip. Knowing about the free Rivian L2 charger in the future might well change your total cost/mile if you charge just enough to get you there safely and charge to 100% overnight.

Also: did you sign up for a Premium plan with EA, as it will save you money and is easily cancelled after the trip

 

Thanks! Yes we did... that was definitely worth it for this one. The price/kWh in Chattanooga region was about $0.64/kWh... most everywhere else in the region tops out around $0.51/kWh.

 

At both places you stopped for EA, there are Tesla superchargers close by. Just up 75 from Ooltewah is a V4 (so longer cables) in Cleveland at a Target. Also at a Target in Knoxville on Ray Mears Blvd is another V4 supercharger. I've used both on my road trips and with the Tesla membership they are cheaper than EA. Also many more stalls than EA which only have 4.

 

Good to know! Thanks for the tip.

 

I just bought a 2024 q8 etron, and am doing my 1 st road trip in 2 weeks, Jupiter FL to Dolgeville NY with a few stops to see friends.


Getting 3.0 at times which is obviously nice.

Bought it with 8700 miles. Been perfect so far minus my TPMS sensors which go in next week.

 

I arrived in upstate NY from Jupiter a few days ago. Averaged 2.5 overall, it’s hard to drive slow, lol. I had some easy charging sessions and some difficult ones with inop chargers, not accepting payment or not starting. You guys know all the difficulties but I still am happy with my Q8. I’m getting better with finding quality stations to charge and love the Tesla stations.