"All in e-tron", actually from Audi?)
It is hard to imagine that Audi, which has a huge volume in the domestic fuel vehicle market, would actually say "all in e-tron". That's not enough to make a fuss, though. After all, as governments around the country are vigorously advocating new energy vehicles, although the development of fuel vehicles has exceeded a hundred years, at the moment of global new energy vehicles, no car company should be able to bypass this route.
Especially in recent years, as new energy electric vehicles have gradually been recognized by consumers, more and more car companies have begun to participate in the wave of electrification, even luxury brand Audi is no exception. So what does the future hold for Audi's electrification? Perhaps at the "Audi Future Festival" before the Guangzhou Auto Show, we can give us a little inspiration.
There is no doubt that through the two concept cars of Audi Grandsphere and Audi Skysphere, we can see that Audi has finally shown a rethinking of the future of smart cars, especially its own "luxury" positioning, in addition to electrification. Of course, to get back to the roots, it still has to return to the Audi e-tron.
On December 8, the Audi e-tron family pure electric driving tour began at Shenzhen Station. The opening work of the Audi brand's "all in e-tron" product strategy, together with the Audi e-tron Sportback, forms the first C-class luxury coupe family camp in the electric era, which seems to announce the Audi brand "S· T· E· P" Electrification Strategy 2.0 era is coming.
Of course, as the first domestic pure electric medium and large SUV of a luxury brand, in addition to the appeal of the Audi brand itself, where are the advantages of the Audi e-tron? No, after the test drive of this car in Shenzhen, the Audi e-tron really impressed me, and I will share it with you today.
There is technology, there is sports, and there is more luxury
Today, most electric vehicles are trapped in the "minimalist" melody of "going with the flow". For example, design, the mainstream style of "electric vehicle design = simplicity", is trying to kill more possibilities belonging to electric vehicles. It is conceivable that when the design of all electric vehicles is "similar", it will lead to the more homogeneous new energy products, but lose the independence of the brand.
It is true that this simple design style may be due to aerodynamic considerations, but it is this kind of cookie-cutter "simplicity" that has created the current situation of new energy vehicles and the weakening of brand power. The reason is that most brands only build an electric vehicle, not a certain brand of electric vehicles, and the concept of putting the cart before the horse is making more new energy electric vehicles lose their brand characteristics.
On the contrary, the design style that can be "carried" by new energy electric vehicles in the future should be endless and unique, and simplicity is only one of all electric vehicle design styles. Fortunately, in this process of homogenization, a few brands still maintain their own independent style, and Audi is one of them.
As in this test drive activity, the Audi coaching team tirelessly emphasized: "The Audi e-tron is first an Audi, and then an electric car." It seems that Audi has always emphasized its unique understanding of building electric vehicles from beginning to end, and this is the epitome of the current era of Audi's full electrification.
Returning to design, we can easily capture familiar Audi elements in the Audi e-tron. It can be seen that the expression of Audi e-tron in terms of sense of technology is confident, as if it does not need to make too many adjustments, only relying on the original "technology" attributes, it can properly express the "sense of technology" of the future.
For example, its active opening and closing front grille uses a gray and chrome combination, which looks futuristic. More importantly, the Audi e-tron is equipped with matrix LED headlights as standard, which dynamically and accurately illuminate the road. The digital matrix LED headlights equipped with the Audi e-tron Sportback can achieve animation projection function, which is very cool.
In terms of interior, Audi's virtual cockpit also looks full of technology and luxury, and at the same time, the exquisite details also reflect the car quality precipitated by Audi, a century-old car company. For example, the trim on the centre console offers four types of carbon fiber, brushed aluminium, solid wood and dynamic aluminium to create different styles of interior atmosphere.
And the layout of the three LCD screens, as well as the design of various physical buttons, are very ergonomic, which is also the difference between the Audi e-tron and other new energy models. In addition, the new car's excellent NVH performance coupled with the 16-speaker B&O sound undoubtedly takes this luxurious, comfortable and sporty ride to a new level.
Obviously, this may be the cleverness of the Audi e-tron, and we can talk bluntly about it as an "oil to electricity", but there is no trace of complaint. Because while inheriting the tradition, its design is advanced, as if it can perfectly fit the design style of fuel vehicles and electric vehicles, even if it has a lot of traditional fuel vehicle shadows, but when it is called an electric vehicle, there is no sense of violation.
Perhaps, for most people, luxury branding means a status symbol. So, Audi uses its own brand heritage to interpret an electric car, is it a kind of beauty of both worlds?
Say goodbye to silly fast, quattro electric four-wheel drive is very powerful
Obviously, from the design level, it can be seen that the Audi e-tron is always emphasizing that it is an Audi and then an electric car. Even if we shift our gaze from static to dynamic, there has never been a single change. Indeed, when we drove up, the Audi e-tron still had a full "Audi flavor".
Of course, this is different from the "silly fast" of the current ordinary electric vehicle model. For today's new energy electric models, most new energy electric models often have a good acceleration performance because the motor can output maximum torque characteristics in the initial stage. However, blindly emphasizing how "fast" their models are, they ignore the real driving pleasure, such as chassis, throttle, brake tuning and so on.
Returning to the power parameters of audi e-tron, it can be seen that, like the imported version, the domestic version also adopts the layout of an AC asynchronous motor on the front and rear axles, the total power of the motor is 230kW, the total torque is 540N·m, and it has a strong parameter performance of zero hundred acceleration of 7.27 seconds and a maximum speed of 187km/h (electronic speed limit).
At the experience level, the Audi e-tron driving experience is very "Audi". First of all, it gives people a feeling of calm, this feeling is very similar to the Audi Q7, it looks gentle, not grumpy, when we try to accelerate the pedal, no matter what driving mode, it is "sticky" people, very docile, with "heel and linear" electric door tuning, indeed like a high-horsepower traditional fuel car feeling.
Of course, in addition to having an absolutely linear acceleration feeling, I was also impressed by the Chassis Suspension Tuning of the Audi e-Tron. The Audi e-tron features a front and rear five-link independent suspension (Q8 suspension) and adaptive air suspension. When driving on the city roads of Shenzhen, when passing some speed bumps or manhole covers, the chassis feels very comfortable and can quickly deal with these vibrations.
When going to the multi-highway section of Huizhou, the Audi e-tron feels very stable, the chassis is very solid, even if it is driven to 120km/h, there is no feeling of drifting. Of course, this also has the reason for the low center of gravity of electric vehicles. It is worth mentioning that when we drive to 120km/h at high speed, the people in the car can still communicate normally, and the wind noise and tire noise are well suppressed, which is the NVH level that a luxury car should have.
Finally, when we came to the sea-ring road section of Huizhou Shuangyue Bay, we found the power of the Audi e-tron electric quattro. The four-wheel drive system enables stepless distribution of torque before and after, with a response time of only a quarter of that of the mechanical quattro. When passing through the curves of the winding road, it is obvious that the torque is quickly distributed to the outside vehicle, so that all four wheels are firmly grasping the ground, giving us the confidence to "split the bend" and let us drive with ease.
It can be seen that although the Audi e-tron is a pure electric SUV with urban positioning, after passing the test of urban areas, high-speed, winding roads and non-paved roads, Audi e-tron does show the deep heritage of traditional luxury car companies in terms of quality and handling.
Advanced and efficient three-electric system, so that the mileage "WYSIWYG"
Of course, in terms of endurance, the Audi e-tron is also worthy of praise, its high-voltage battery has a total capacity of 96.7kWh, an energy density of 142.00Wh/kg, a total voltage of 396V, and a maximum cruising range of up to 500 km (NEDC). It seems that there is a gap with the endurance of five or six hundred of new car-making forces, but when we test drive, it completely changed my understanding of endurance, which is really what I see is what I get.
Take the Audi e-tron 2021 50 quattro premium model for this test drive, and the pure electric mileage of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is 465km. When we drove 50km in this more complex road condition in Downtown Shenzhen (including traffic jams, idling, and turning on air conditioning), the meter mileage also dropped by only 50km, and then when we cruised on the city highway, the change of the meter mileage was not much different from the actual mileage. Compared with the 400km endurance performance of the new car-making forces model, the endurance performance of the Audi e-tron is undoubtedly more real.
In addition, the Audi coaching team also demonstrated the Cams charging experience of Kaimeis, and the Audi e-tron not only supports fast and slow charging methods. It also supports 120KW super fast charge, and it takes only 40 minutes for the battery level to reach 80% of the total capacity from 5%. Coupled with 3 kinetic energy recovery methods and 3 gears of mobilizable energy recovery, it fully meets the various needs of our daily urban pure electric travel.
Of course, the Audi e-tron's excellent endurance performance is also due to its excellent three-electric quality. It is equipped with an intelligent thermal management system that ensures that the battery pack temperature is always maintained in the optimal efficiency range of 25-35 °C. And the entire battery pack is not only protected by a three-layer aluminum alloy shell, but also has undergone 137 ultra-national battery safety tests. In addition, according to the introduction, the Battery Pack of the Audi e-Tron is also equipped with a variety of active safety technologies, such as an insulation test on the battery pack every 30 seconds. It can be said that the Audi e-tron is not only more realistic than the new car-making power model, but also pays more attention to battery safety.
Automotive Network Review: The Audi e-tron is a "luxury" electric car
At present, it seems that more and more electric vehicle brands are losing their brand characteristics, and it is precisely this trend that has created the uniqueness of the Audi brand and made us appreciate the valuables of the Audi e-tron. As Audi shows, the Audi e-tron is first a "luxury Audi model, then an electric car."
Because of this, let us see that audi in the process of full electrification, it has always retained a stubbornness to the future, as well as respect for the past. Of course, this persistence and reticence is not pedantic, but in this homogeneous era, it is the moat of Audi's last luxury heritage. In short, for most people, when choosing, whether it is for the "Audi" brand or the sense of luxury it brings, I believe many people already have the answer.