We’ve had the car for a bit more than a week. It got to Boise on the 6th. I got down there on the 8th to drive it and pay for it. Without any real-world numbers on miles/kWh or charging rates, I planned a route for brining it home, a trip of about 500 miles. It would have been a fun adventure. Other family issues made us re-think our need and capacity for adventure at that time. So we shipped the car home.
It arrived on the 16th. We have about three hundred miles on the odometer and have charged twice at home and once on a public DC charger.
The car says it is getting 3.1 km per kWh. That’s 1.9 miles per kWh and the car can, in theory, spit out 76 kWh before calling it good. That suggests the range on 80 percent of a full battery is 146 miles. That’s way off the advertised 204 miles and the 212 miles the car says it has on a full battery. We need more time to sort out the real range of this thing.
We have a two 240V, 40A circuits in the garage with NEMA 14-50 receptacles. The car’s charging unit fits that receptacle. Technically, the ‘gizmo’ they give you is called an EVSE, electric car supply equipment. The charger is in the car. The ESVE has a NEMA plug on one side and a J1772 connector on the other. It has control electronics that keep everyone safe while charging and not charging.
The circuit we have should charge the car at 9.6 kWh. But we only get 4.4 kWh. That means a full charge should take around 25 hours, much longer than the 9 hours Audi advertises. I did notice the ESVE says “50%”, which is close to 4.4 kWh. I just can’t find any switch to make it work at 100%!
Today I charged at a 50 kWh DC EVgo station at the local shopping center. I was able to charge from 57% to 95% in 42 minutes. My math says that’s 36.1 kWh, but the charger says it delivered 35.3 kWh. Close enough. That’s 0.84 kWh per minute or 50 kWh per hour. At that rate, a full (20% to 100%) charge should take 90 minutes. A 150 kWh charger should be almost three times faster.
The cost of the 50 kWh charger, for 35 kWh was $13.40. That’s roughly 20 cents per mile. At $4/gal, my Q7 costs about the same to operate. The lesson here is — charge at home!
Bottom line
On the highway, two hours of driving will take you about 150 miles and run your battery down to twenty percent. It will take about thirty minutes to recharge that if you can find 150 kWh charger, 90 minutes otherwise.
Around town, the same 150 miles will take you two to three days in the suburbs and will require 17 hours to refill. It’s probably best to charge every night.
Overall impressions of the car
We love it! It’s super comfortable, luxurious actually. It drives well, is fast enough and handles nicely. The audio is good. Features are outstanding, it’s fully loaded. (We have the Edition One.) You do feel like you are driving the future of automobiles.
Negatives include CarPlay (which is flaky as heck), no user manuals and slow charging at home.
We need to find a 150 kWh charger and get more real-world mileage before we take a road trip. Spokane is a common destination for us. We see ElectrifyAmerica will have a 150 kWh charger on that route soon. But there is nothing high-speed near family in Spokane. So we can get there, but will need a long time to charge enough to get back to the high-speed charger. For now, this is an around-town car. But a really, really nice one!