What is the range of the Audi e-tron?

Officially, the e-tron quattro had a range of up to 234 miles, but you’ll be lucky to get that far. Figure on a minimum of 150 miles, and a maximum of about 200 miles, depending on the weather conditions and your driving style.

Is the Audi e-tron reliable?

It appears to be, and indeed seems to be slightly more reliable than an equivalent Q5 or Q7. There’s only been one recall, and Audi seems to have invested time and money to make sure that the e-tron quattro was right first time.

Can the Audi e-tron use a Tesla charger?

Yes, but it depends on the Supercharger site. Tesla has opened up some of its Superchargers in the UK and Ireland to all EV users, meaning that 477 connectors across 42 sites are available, but you’ll have to set up a Tesla account through the brand’s smartphone app.

How big is the Audi e-tron?

The Audi e-tron quattro is 4,901mm long, 1,935mm wide, and 1,616mm tall, and it weighs 2,560kg at the kerb.

How do you charge the Audi e-tron?

The e-tron quattro actually has two charging sockets, one on each side mounted just behind the front wheels, and fitted with electric flaps. Just press the little button on the corner of the flap and it will whirr open for you. The socket on the left of the car will only accept a Type 2 cable for slow AC charging, and the e-tron quattro can accept a maximum of 22kW — such as from a kerbside charger, which means it can fully charge in around four and a half hours. From a home charger, running at 7.4kW, it will take more than ten hours to fully charge. On a DC fast charger, the maximum charging speed is 170kW, which means the e-tron can charge up to 80% in about half an hour in ideal conditions. The charging socket on the right-hand side of the e-tron quattro is a double-socket, and can accept either a Type 2 AC connector, or a bigger CCS DC high-speed charger.

How fast is the Audi e-tron?

It depends on the model. The mid-spec e-tron 55 quattro, with 408hp, can get from 0-62mph in 5.7 seconds. The more powerful 500hp e-tron quattro S, with its three electric motors, can do the same sprint in 4.5 seconds.

How long does it take to charge the Audi e-tron?

From a home charger, at 7.4kW, it’ll take around ten hours to fully charge an Audi e-tron quattro. If you’re connected to a 22kW kerbside charger, that drops to around four and a half hours, while a rapid DC charger capable of 170kW power or above will give the e-tron quattro an 80% charge in about 30 minutes.

How long does an Audi e-tron battery last?

That’s up for debate. As with most car makers, Audi gives the e-tron quattro’s battery an eight-year, 100,000-mile warranty but the earlier cars may well have batteries which have been weakened by lots and lots of fast charging.

Is the Audi e-tron four-wheel drive?

Yes, hence the ‘quattro’ in its name. The basic versions are all twin-motor designs — one motor in the front, one in the back, so all four wheels are powered. The high-performance S model actually uses three motors — one in the front and two in the back — again powering all four wheels.

When did the Audi e-tron first come out?

The Audi e-tron quattro was first launched in 2018.

Where is the Audi e-tron made?

The Audi e-tron quattro was made in Audi’s factory in Brussels, and has been replaced there by the Q8 e-tron (essentially the same car with a different badge and an upgraded battery).

Used Audi e-tron cars for sale

Is a second hand Audi e-tron a good car?

The e-tron quattro was Audi’s first all-electric car on sale, following in the footsteps of the Jaguar I-Pace and Mercedes EQC back in 2018. Since then, it’s been updated and re-named as the Q8 e-tron (which is a bit confusing as the petrol Q8 is still on sale too…) but the original model now makes a relatively affordable way to get yourself a slice of premium EV motoring.

It’s a fairly plain-looking car on the outside, easily mistaken for an Audi Q5 in fact, but inside the cabin is properly luxurious with big, comfortable seats and lashings of high-quality materials — suedette, brushed aluminium, leather — on show.

Which is not to say that there aren’t a few cheap plastics — there are — but they’re small in number and reasonably well tucked away. Plus the big touchscreens (one for the infotainment system and one for the climate control) work mostly well, and there’s a digital instrument display and head-up display for the driver. Plus the gear selector looks and feels like the throttle handle of an Airbus, and who doesn’t love that?

Space in the back is good too, with room enough for three adults, and the big boot — 605 litres — is backed up by a storage area in the nose for stashing your charging cables. There’s also lots of storage space in the cabin too, so the e-tron quattro is a very practical car indeed. That’s even true of the coupe-esque e-tron quattro Sportback, which arrived in 2020 with a sleek roof and fractionally better range thanks to better aerodynamics.

If you’re charging up at home, the e-tron quattro’s big battery — there was initially a choice of 71kWh or 95kWh battery packs — will take around ten hours to charge from flat on a home charger, but it’s rather more brisk if you’re hooking it up to a DC rapid charger. Then the e-tron quattro can manage up to 170kW which will give you an 80% charge in about half an hour. Just remember that there are two charging sockets, with electric flaps on them, and it’s the one on the right that takes a CCS fast charger.

The downside to the e-tron quattro is that no matter which version you pick — and there were versions with 313hp, 408hp, and an S model that used three electric motors (one front, two rear) for 500hp — the range just wasn’t very good. In fact, that range could drop as low as 150 miles if the weather was cold and you were driving fairly briskly. Warmer weather would unlock as much as 200 miles, but you’d have to work on your driving efficiency to get that far. The newer Q8 e-tron fares a little better thanks to an improved battery, so if your budget stretches to nearly-new, that’s the one to go for.

On the upside, air suspension made the e-tron quattro spectacularly comfortable, and if you were in a mind to waste some of that range, it was pretty quick — especially that three-motor S model which could power each rear wheel individually to make the e-tron quattro feel more agile through the bends. Even so, it’s a big heavy car, and feels it in tighter corners where there’s more body roll than you might expect.
The e-tron quattro was a significant car for Audi, being its first modern EV, and — range excepted — a pretty good one at that, even if more modern alternatives make up for the Audi’s lack of range.

What to look for when buying a used Audi e-tron

First and foremost, make sure that any used e-tron quattro comes with a battery health check so that you can make sure all is in order under the body. The early e-tron models were launched at a time when battery technology was still very new, and so don’t have the protective battery management systems that modern EVs enjoy, so it’s easy to reduce the battery’s health with too much fast-charging — something that the e-tron’s short range means owners might have had to do a lot.

The e-tron quattro has only had one safety recall — for a water leak in the battery pack — and otherwise it seems to be generally more reliable than an equivalent Q5 or Q7. The e-tron quattro didn’t place in the Driver Power Satisfaction Survey’s top 50 models list (most likely because not enough owners responded to the survey) but Audi itself didn’t do well — the brand finished in 27th place out of 32, with 21% of owners reporting problems with their cars.