(Bloomberg) — Barry Hoch, a tall fellow in a button-down shirt and a Michigan accent, has been talking for an hour about the 2023 Audi Q4 e-Tron he developed as Audi’s senior director of product planning.
But as we walk around Audi’s third new EV model, parked in the street near the beach in Santa Monica, Calif., his Midwestern monotone shifts decidedly into something resembling excitement.
“See that line, how sharp that edge is?” he says, eagerly pointing to the ridge that flows around the middle of SUV’s rear quarter panel. “See how that tow hook is hidden so perfectly down there? That’s some guy in Germany showing off.”
Then he flicks the back of his fingers in an arch out from underneath his chin: “This is the German version of flexing on Tesla.”
It’s rare to see such posturing about an entry-level SUV. Usually brands as varied as Tesla, BMW, and Maserati, all produce family haulers that are ubiquitous blobs about as exciting as toasters. But with carefully considered details inside and out, the newest member of Audi’s electric e-Tron family is a welcome addition to the otherwise humdrum segment.
Electric, Normalized
Audi’s Q4 model line joins the GT and e-Tron lines of electric vehicles. It comes in two forms: the Q4 e-Tron, which has a more traditional rear end shaped like a softly rounded rectangle, and the Q4 e-Tron Sportback, which has a rear roofline that slopes more abruptly down from the top, cutting visibility slightly but making the vehicle look sportier on the whole.
I drove the Q4 e-Tron Sportback, which costs $3,000 more than the estimated $55,000 price tag of the regular version. It had a few upgrades, like 20-inch wheels, and drops an inch of headroom in the rear. They both get 241 miles of driving range and can do 0-60mph in 5.8 seconds. Top speed is 112mph. I prefer how the Sportback looks and would willingly pay the small premium to get it.
Driving the e-Tron Sportback through the hills in Cornell, Calif., felt as unremarkable as driving, say, an Audi Q3 through the hills in Cornell, Calif. This is a good thing. It means Audi was able to match the prompt acceleration, responsive braking, and intuitive handling as its conventional SUV in this lithium-ion marvel. There’s no drama here—just German engineering excellence.
I was happy to find that the regenerative braking in the e-Tron could be adjusted to allow me to coast like a normal person rather than abruptly slowing to regain energy at the expense of my back and nerves. I’m not a fan of what automakers are trying to market as “one-pedal driving”—it’s like trying to make how it feels to drive a golf cart seem novel, even desired. It’s not.
I completed a 65-mile hilly drive with even thinking about battery life; I estimate my range dropped about 50-55 miles total, having regained some mileage via braking. Charge time to full, had I needed it, would have been just over seven hours on a level-two charger like the kind some people have at home, Audi says. If you use a DC fast charger, that time is cut to one hour for a full charge.
Inside the e-Tron
The Q4 e-Tron’s driving range falls short compared with the 300-plus ranges boasted by the Tesla Model X, Cadillac Lyriq, and BMW iX. But it was the attention paid to the interior setup and build quality that made it feel superior to the Tesla and Cadillac, and on par with the BMW.
For instance: Unlike the top of the Lucid Air (and Hummer EV, for that matter), the Q4 e-Tron offers a clear glass top that opens and has a sunshade—critical elements the others missed and a welcome boon for those of us at all concerned about sunstroke, skin cancer, and generally overheating in a greenhouse of a car. “We spent a lot of time trying to convince guys who live in cloudy areas of Europe that a sunshade is important,” Hoch said.
The steering wheel’s rounded square shape, and a healthy mix of touchscreens, buttons, and knobs, gave the Q4 e-Tron a futuristic but familiar feel. Over-the-air software updates to refine such things as the entertainment are forthcoming; so is a RWD version, in 2023.
It all feels more high-end than the Cadillac Lyriq I recently drove, though less fussy than some of the Mercedes SUVs can feel. The Q4 e-Tron is the first vehicle to offer a sound system from the well-regarded home audio company Sonos. You can customize the headlights to illuminate in the shape of a handful of designs. Cruising through the hills in Topanga Canyon, I decided had found the Goldilocks of infotainment setups.
There were lots of practical considerations, too. Bottle holders set flush to the inside of each door. The sideview mirrors are shifted out and down, to allow more sightlines around the front and sides of the vehicle. Ample head- and legroom even in back of the Sportback—yes, of course I tried it—all felt derived from people who had known and lived with this SUV in real-life settings on a daily basis.
There’s up to 54.4-cubic feet of storage in the rear with the seats folded flat; a sensor on the rear door handles will unlock those first, rather than just the driver’s door, for when you want to load the back seat full of groceries or children before you get inside. It felt like the moms and dads in the world had sat down and made a list of all the things they wanted in an electric SUV, then made that. For what is considered an entry-level version of a luxury SUV, you get a lot for your money.
Plenty of Fish in the Sea
I still don’t understand why, years after Audi introduced its first electric vehicle, and with more than 10 variants of its electric vehicles now available, more people don’t know about them. When I ask my friends, practically none of whom are car people, which EV they want, they say Tesla by default. I can only assume that Tesla’s decade-long head start in creating the EV segment and the cartoonishly outsize life, personal and private, of its founder, Elon Musk, has created such awareness of the brand that other automakers who make superior EVs will simply require some time for perception to match reality.
Audi spokespeople say the Q4 e-Tron is not intended to “steal customers from Tesla,” as spokesman Mark Dahnke told me the other day. Those most likely to buy it are consumers who already trust Audi for its well-made, smart, cool-looking vehicles—and those who are put off by Musk’s antics.
Either is reason enough to get inside the Q4 e-Tron. Once you’re behind the steering wheel, the vehicle speaks for itself. After the somewhat lackluster Lyriq, which was the last electric SUV I drove, and tired of those ubiquitous Teslas I see all around California, the Audi Q4 e-Tron is like a sweet exhale. I practically wanted to embrace it.
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