Yesterday I drove my new 2021 E-tron SUV 25 odometer miles but saw the range go down 38 miles (from 173 at the start to 135 upon return) with climate control set at 72 degrees. Most of the drive was on limited access roads with little braking. In the nine days I’ve had the car I’ve capped daily battery charging at 80%. Is this ratio of odometer mileage/battery mileage consumption normal? What am I missing here?
odometer vs charge mileage
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That seems like unusually high consumption. I'm assuming the trip didn't have long areas where you were going uphill? If it did and you returned via the same route, you'd make up for that by going back downhill. I've had 2 BEVs and haven't seen that high a disparity between actual mileage and what the range says although the GOM is almost always overly optimistic. Remember the range is displayed on what is affectionately called the GOM (guess O meter). It becomes obvious how it got its name and it's not just an Audi thing. From what I understand though, the Audi's range indicator tends to be more accurate than some others.
I'm seriously considering the e-tron and posts like this do scare me a bit.
I'm seriously considering the e-tron and posts like this do scare me a bit.
No, not much uphill. I’m going to do a run with climate control off completely to see any difference.
Are you starting from a Cold Start and how has your weather been? Do you notice that you are losing a good chunk of miles in the first 30 minutes of driving? Also, are you making frequent stops, as in running errands, etc? If your driving pattern is such that it doesn't give the battery a decent amount of time to warm up, that will affect your GOM.
Today’s better. Battery/odometer is 11/10. Maybe the software is learning based on driving style...
So I just came back from a test drive on a Premium Plus E-tron. It was all on level local streets in mostly slow traffic, driving in eco mode on for a total of about 15 minutes. The range went down 6 miles for a total distance traveled of about 3.5 miles. Not great. The temperature was in the upper 50s, so I'm not sure the issue of keeping the battery at 77 degrees should have been a major factor.
This is the only thing that gives me pause about this otherwise great car. The ride was undeniably smooth and ultra quiet.
Any thoughts from owners about the range issue? Should temps in the upper 50s really impact range as I saw it?
This is the only thing that gives me pause about this otherwise great car. The ride was undeniably smooth and ultra quiet.
Any thoughts from owners about the range issue? Should temps in the upper 50s really impact range as I saw it?
Keep in mind that the vehicle has been sitting at a dealer, where it's probably seen a lot of people sitting in it with it on, having all the features messed with followed by a short trip with a few blasts of hard acceleration. Doesn't surprise me that for the first bit the range estimator has no idea what's going on while it clears out its memory.
I wonder if that partially contributes to the range issues I saw today too. The tester was parked right outside the front door, so it is possible that people played with a number of features. But if that's the case, wouldn't the range reflect that as soon as I started the car rather than quickly peeling off the miles relative to the actual miles driven?
Hard to say how large of a period of time it looks at when averaging data and what assumptions it makes.
Everything I've heard about the e-tron is that it does a pretty good job of getting the mileage it's actually supposed to get.
I've heard the same thing and it's why I was surprised by what I saw. I'm assuming the Q4 will get something like 30-40 miles more range based on its improved efficiency, but I have to decide if that's worth giving up a degree of luxury. I do find that new heads up display on the Q4 intriguing.
This 77F business I think is a bit of an issue. If you are getting into a sitting car, turned off, the battery is not going to be 77F. When turned off, the E Tron has no phantom drain, so no electricity is being used to magically keep the battery at 77F. Since the car is idle, there is no drivetrain heat, nor electronics heat, being generated that the car might use. The car has to warm up.
Electron consumption is not a constant. From a "cold start" with a battery temp at ambient, I find it takes about 20 minutes of driving (in the 50F's range) before my car's efficiency gets up into the 2.1-2.3 mi/kWh. This slow climb is from the need for a combination of cabin conditioning and battery warming, early on primarily through self-heating of the battery (the battery warms up when charging or discharging). Soon waste heat from the Drivetrain/electronics can start to help out. From the experience I've had with my 2019, the GOM does not have a good way of predicting miles until the car has warmed up (20 min or so). When I get in first time for the day and see the GOM estimate, I immediately dismiss about the first 10. The posted GOM miles melt away while the odometer creeps up. After that, things stabilize and the GOM works quite well. On timed comparisons I have done after this initial period, I often find that the GOM drop and odometer rise match within a mile.
As others have noted, with other drivers fiddling with things at the Dealer the GOM is not going to be very good predictively probably for a much longer period.
Finally, yes 50F will affect both the Charging capacity and the Discharging efficiency of the battery. There is not a lot of hard data on what that impact is quantitatively, but most EV's operating in 30F, or so, ambient will lose about 15 to 20% of ideal maximum capacity.
Audi has some features to help with this problem. If you use the MyAudi app to set up a Timed Charge, you input the departure time and the car will start to charge so that it is ready by that departure time (in my car, charging seems to be completed about an hour before the departure time). You can also set up "cabin conditioning" as part of the Timed Charge. If you do, around the departure time the car will warm up the cabin by pulling power from the wall so you do not sacrifice stored capacity to get your cabin up to temp. Also, the battery will be somewhat warmed from the charging cycle. My experience in 30F weather is that Timed Charging with cabin conditioning cuts in half the time it would take for the car to warm up. That saves me 15 mi or so.
Thanks JNealCox for that explanation. I'm trying to reconcile this behavior with my I-Pace. As an example, here's the stats on my latest charge:
I started with an indicated GOM range of 226 miles at a 91% charge (I never believe the initial GOM range). Most of my current driving for this charge has been local and a bit of highway at 60-65. This has occurred over a 3 day period, so no long drives and lots of relatively short stints with no extended warmups. I should also add I never plugged in during this period. My range is now down to 103 miles with 99 miles driven. So at this point that would indicate a real range of 202 miles vs the GOM's stated 226 at the start of this cycle, a difference of 24 miles or a bit over 10%.
So I'm wondering if I duplicated this type of driving with the e-tron, would I take a big hit in the range. That's my real concern. I don't believe the I-Pace tries to maintain a constant battery temperature, but I could be wrong.
I started with an indicated GOM range of 226 miles at a 91% charge (I never believe the initial GOM range). Most of my current driving for this charge has been local and a bit of highway at 60-65. This has occurred over a 3 day period, so no long drives and lots of relatively short stints with no extended warmups. I should also add I never plugged in during this period. My range is now down to 103 miles with 99 miles driven. So at this point that would indicate a real range of 202 miles vs the GOM's stated 226 at the start of this cycle, a difference of 24 miles or a bit over 10%.
So I'm wondering if I duplicated this type of driving with the e-tron, would I take a big hit in the range. That's my real concern. I don't believe the I-Pace tries to maintain a constant battery temperature, but I could be wrong.
That would be a tough comparison to make. However, Audi seems to be best in class when it comes to battery thermal management. For HVDC charging, it has the best charging characteristic in the industry, and that is because of it battery thermal management (I've seen this in side-by-side comparisons with the iPace, for example).
My thinking is that if you are comparing GOM and odometer, it should not really matter what your initial charging state is. For your i Pace, over a three day period, you have the big unknown of how many times you had go from a cold start to a warmed battery. My inclination is to write off a few miles every time I have to start with a cold car. It doesn't really matter what the initial SOC is, but it DOES matter what the ambient temperature is. In my case, 40-50F weather, I will lose I'm probably writing off 5 to 10 miles. (I really haven't paid that much attention to how much that drop is. I'll have to take closer note.) In your case, if you only did one cold start, you would be saying you write off 24 miles.
After that, the GOM and odometer match pretty well. Still, the E Tron is probably the least efficient EV around. I'm pretty sure your iPace does better than 2.5 or so mi/kWh.
Overall, I really try not to obsess about it. Operationally, I know the Audi meets my needs, so I really don't track the GOM that closely. I tend to follow the ICE model--is the battery half full? 3/4 of a tank?
Yup, I know the level 3 charging curve for the e-tron blows away the I-Pace. It seems to maintain a very high rate until about 80% which far surpasses the I-Pace. As far as efficiency, the I-Pace isn't that great either, but probably somewhat better than the e-tron. Unfortunately the I-Pace doesn't read out in mi/kWh, so it makes it less than easy to figure that out at any point in time, but I suspect in some use cases it is better than the e-tron. However from what I've read, the e-tron is better than the I-Pace on the highway. The I-Pace is very inefficient at speeds of 65 or greater.
Going back to my example that I posted above, during that 3 day period I probably had about 4 cold starts. So I suspect the e-tron is less forgiving of these cold starts than the I-Pace. So it seems there's give & take depending on your use case for any given day or week.
Going back to my example that I posted above, during that 3 day period I probably had about 4 cold starts. So I suspect the e-tron is less forgiving of these cold starts than the I-Pace. So it seems there's give & take depending on your use case for any given day or week.
Be advised also that in cold weather, range can be reduced by as much as 30%. Cabin heat, battery heating, wipers, and lights all use battery power. Consider minimal cabin heating. Often, seat heating and steering wheel heater will keep you feeling warm without heating up the whole interior of the car.
As originator of this thread, let me amend and report that I have now used myaudi app to run climate control for 1/2 hour off wall power, meaning little or no impact on the HV battery charge delivered last night which, I believe, would mean no sudden drop in battery mileage if I drove out of the garage right now. So thank you, all who’ve replied and, to those considering an E-tron, go for it! I love mine.
Well, not quite. It will be significantly reduced. Doing a timed charge has the battery complete charging BY the Departure time that was input. Charging close to departure is good for two reasons: 1) having the car sit at a full SOC is not the best for battery health; 2) the battery will also be somewhat warmed due to battery self-heating. Still, it is unlikely that the battery will be at its optimal performance temp. So initially you will see some accelerated drop as the battery efficiency increases. I'm not in a severely cold area, still, for me, I find using the timer/precond option cuts this "warmup" time in half.
You might find this interesting: In Dec 2020 I joined the Recurrent Battery Health project. The aim is to aggregate data and apply analysis to provide prospective EV resellers info on the performance and health of an EV battery. I just got my March report and for the first time it posts expected Range vs Temperature for my E Tron, based on data from comparable EV's. So, my miles drop off about about 10% when the ambient is 32F, as opposed to 72F; the drop off is about 2.5% when ambient is 100F, as opposed to 72F.
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