[Steviestainz]

I'm new to the forum, but not new to the e-tron - having owned my Launch Edition 55 for around a year now.

I was one of the first deliveries of that model into the UK around early summer 2019 so didn't really find anyone else to share info with initially, and unfortunately the car hasn't been driven continuously due to extended workshop visits, other repair work and Covid-19 restrictions. However since getting out a bit more recently and comparing my economy data with other threads on this site I downloaded the data from the 'my Audi' app and started playing around in Excel to analyse the .csv file.

Basically the data set is around 500 journeys, a couple of which seem to be logged twice (with similar start times, durations and distance logged) so this might be a bug. However there's a full year of data now and quite a lot of journeys.

Most of my trips are local town traffic, stop/start and under 8 miles on average. So for certain I'm using the air-con and heating during the year for short cycles where they are using the most energy to attain their set-point. A lot of journeys are only 1-2 miles. Occasional longer journeys of 180 mi for holiday have been few and far between.

I'm going to quote the data below in miles per kilowatt hour, i.e. how far can I go with each of my precious 95kWh in the battery before recharging. NB I understand that the net available capacity is more like ~86 kWh because Audi kept some of the battery spare for deterioration over the lifetime of the battery.

So having outlined the basic details of how I'm using the car the overall average energy usage across all 500 journeys is:

1.63 mi / kWh (or 2.62 km / kWh)

That's much lower than I was hoping IMHO and extrapolates to an average range per 100% charge of just (1.63 mi * 86.5 kwH) = 140 miles based upon my driving requirements e.g. short journeys with air-con, heating, stop-start traffic etc.

I decided to dig a bit deeper into the figures to see if my consumption was getting worse over time, or affected by the ambient temperature. Generally I always recharge when I'm around 45-50% remaining and cap the charging cycle at 80% SoC so that's not a variable in my use.

Graph 1 - average speed (mph) vs average consumption (mi/kWh)

This graph shows the average speed over every journey shown against the energy consumption average for the same. I guess even though we might reach 70 mph regularly during a motorway journey the average overall is much less when including the regional roads etc. So you'll see a sizeable spread of average speed data points, and no journeys with an average speed above 43mph (2.6 mi / kWh). There is one outlier, a data point on the right where consumption was 5.5 mi / kWh during a journey where I travelled 4 mi in 18 minutes at an average speed of 12 mph. Go figure!

Graph 2 - average speed (mph) vs median monthly temperature (degC)

Now this was only a hunch, but I thought it's worth looking at the median temp for any given month for my location in the UK (Greater London) and see if energy consumption correlates with the temperature shown in orange. The green line is just a moving average of mi/kWh through the month to see if there's much of a causal link. I'm not a statistician and there's a few gaps in the data but I think it's fair to say that consumption goes up (i.e. less miles per kWh) during the coldest months, which is to be expected when some mornings have been approaching or lower than zero C and when using the heaters has been mandatory. However the hottest months don't seem to have had such a clear impact when using the AC - in fact the hottest month also seems to have been the one where I saw the outlier of 5.5 mi / kWh!

Graph 3 - a different visualisation (mi / kWh consumption stacked on top of average speed)

I think that this shows nicely how there is much better economy when the average journey speed is higher - hence much less start/stop traffic and lost energy due to that repeating cycle.

In summary

My car's MMI currently shows an average Long Term memory over 3,000 miles of 1.8 mi / kWh, and with the data shown above this points to a fairly close approximation when viewed alongside the myAudi app exported information. I'm guessing that a car like the e-tron was designed primarily (both aesthetically and functionally) as a town car, with occasional distance/range potential when coupled with ultra rapid charging - but I would say that the overall range promise of 248 miles at 100% SoC is not realistic for that type of use. As I've said before a lot of my journeys are very short, often commencing in the morning when the interior is cold and needs heating (I do try and pre-warm when I remember!), but the start-stop nature of queuing traffic in town is the major detractor from better economy. If I look closely at the higher mi/kWh values there are a wide cluster of data points around 1.7 - 2.8 mi/kWh concerning any journeys with average speeds greater than 20 mph.

If I multiply those examples by the 86.5 kWh maximum capacity of the battery it equates to a maximum possible range (for journeys above 20 mph on average) as [147 to 242] miles. Results may vary ;-)

Is it a problem for me? No.. not currently, I can easily go days without charging the car and the monthly charging costs are between £15-20 a month for 3,000 miles a year. I've never not been able to recharge the car overnight back to 80% - so from that point of view the economy isn't important - and the car is just beautiful to drive!

PS - to be honest, I put this together to test my own understanding of the way the car was behaving but decided to throw it out for comment. Please do let me know your thoughts and/or compare with your own data!

Steve

 

[RVA]

Thanks for the very thorough analysis. I've been tracking my charging/usage data, without the level of detail you have.

My observations (note: Mid-Atlantic US location)
I also experienced the significant drop in efficiency in cold weather. Here, the coldest months were actually November and December (winter basically ended at Christmas), and my miles/kwh was in the 1.6 to 1.7 range.
One tip I learned - if you are driving alone on a cold (but not bitterly cold) day, use the seat heater and turn the climate control off. I tended to stay plenty warm, and it made a significant impact on efficiency and range.
I also experienced the lack of a drop in efficiency in hot weather - the air conditioning does not seem to be a big draw on the battery. In the heat of last summer (August), I was regularly getting 2.3 to 2.4 miles/kwh. So far this summer (it's only recently gotten over 85 or 90 degrees F), I'm seeing the same thing.
In more temperate times, my efficiency seems to range between 2.4 and 2.7 miles/kwh - a fully charged range consistently above 230 miles.
The car does not like being driven on the highway. 90% of my driving is on secondary roads (25 - 45 mph), which the car seems to be quite efficient at navigating. I took two longer-distance trips (basically about 80% of battery used), and got about 15% lower efficiency than the preceding and following charging cycles.
The range displayed in the car (and on the app) is a consistent lie - I am getting 15% to 20% less miles than the range stated upon full charge. So while I've seen range stated at 260-275 miles, I never achieve it.

 

[Steviestainz]

The car does not like being driven on the highway.

Great feedback, thanks for taking the time to read through the post and for sharing your data too. I’ve noticed myself (and others pointed out in other threads) the effect that hilly terrain has on consumption. Could that also be a contributing factor to the highway driving that you’ve experienced poorer performance during?

Exporting the trip data is easy from within the app in case you wanted to share the details of your own journeys. I’m easily able to output the same graphs now that I’ve built them. No location or private data is exported so we could try to build a bigger data set perhaps for similar climates.

 

[Andrea G]

Audi etron 50 may 2020 1200 km (90% no highway ) media of 23 kwh per 100 km. car set on manual passive braking recharge . About 300 km with full battery (around 85%)
Outside temp around 20° using clima on eco .
my personal record without clima on is 16.1 in city traffic

 

[Steviestainz]

Nice mileage. I think that is equivalent to 2.7 mi / kWh when you quoted 23 kWh / 100 km. I was getting 2.5 mi / kWh today with AC On rather than AC Eco, during a short 30 minute local roads journey at 20C ambient temp today. Mine is a Launch Edition 55 with 21” wheels.

 

[RVA]

I've found the app data to be horribly overstated. I track miles and kwh input for my efficiency/range tracking, I starting trying to use the app data, but found that when I had driven 150 miles and used 65 kwh (2.3 mi/kwh), the app would say I had driven 200 miles, and got over 3 mi/kwh. No idea why it is so bad, but I just quit even looking at the app.

 

[JNealCox]

I'm running about 2.2-2.3 mi/kWh in 70+ F weather. When in range of the 30's and 40's, it's more like 1.8 to 1.9. In the cooler months I find i save significantly on the battery drain if I pre-condition the car in the garage before starting out. I'll be looking at what I get in 90 degree weather in a few weeks!

 

[Steviestainz]

Nice trip out today (Epsom to Brighton and back via Worthing).. started out on 69% charge ‘eek’. Turns out that I made the 113mi with ~45mi to spare (23%), averaging 2.7mi /kWh - temp 20degC.

That’s much more like what I was hoping for but it was a longer run with clear traffic. Another data point for the experiment!

 

[GMTRB5]

I’m averaging 2.0 to 2.2 in the winter, although with bad traffic it can be 1.7 to 1.8... but in the summer I’m averaging 2.5 to 2.8 on a typical journey (mostly A roads...).

move driven about 3,500 miles now and my long term average since owning the car is 2.1 mi/kWh ... I’m aiming for 2.0+ in the winter and 2.5+ in the summer...

 

[tmiele]

I picked up my e-tron on Dec. 9th last year. I've reset the long term memory with each season start here in southern Wisconsin. My winter average was 2.0, driving 2800 miles, spring was 2.5, driving 1400 miles and since last week (summer) it's at 2.7.

 

[mmmzon]

Thanks for sharing all the interesting data points. I almost got eTron several times already but I am mostly detracted by the daily commute (very hilly, motorway 90% of the time) and we also have pretty cold winters in Colorado, with night temperatures dropping to -25C or lower. This year was not that bad, but makes me wonder what kind of effective range would I be getting. Today I had a "test drive" done on along a typical route I would do to work and starting from 188 miles I got back at 129 miles after 32 mile round trip. Nothing crazy speed wise (keeping it at 65 mph on motorway, though it does feel strange given that my current Q5 is most happy around 75 mph or slightly above) and still burned through 59 miles of range for 32 mile loop. If that relationship stays, then eTron would barely give me 100 miles of effective range on my daily commute, making it a full battery charge every 2.5 - 3 days. That is barely equal to the 500+ mile range in a diesel Q5 and same cost wise even with current higher fuel costs. I can hardly justify the purchase looking at the charge cost versus fuel costs savings.

The only upside is the lack of maintenance on eTron (at least the expensive one), but this means that 70k+ vehicle is now taking so much more time to "pay off" ...

 

[JNealCox]

Thanks for sharing all the interesting data points. I almost got eTron several times already but I am mostly detracted by the daily commute (very hilly, motorway 90% of the time) and we also have pretty cold winters in Colorado, with night temperatures dropping to -25C or lower. This year was not that bad, but makes me wonder what kind of effective range would I be getting. Today I had a "test drive" done on along a typical route I would do to work and starting from 188 miles I got back at 129 miles after 32 mile round trip. Nothing crazy speed wise (keeping it at 65 mph on motorway, though it does feel strange given that my current Q5 is most happy around 75 mph or slightly above) and still burned through 59 miles of range for 32 mile loop. If that relationship stays, then eTron would barely give me 100 miles of effective range on my daily commute, making it a full battery charge every 2.5 - 3 days. That is barely equal to the 500+ mile range in a diesel Q5 and same cost wise even with current higher fuel costs. I can hardly justify the purchase looking at the charge cost versus fuel costs savings.

The only upside is the lack of maintenance on eTron (at least the expensive one), but this means that 70k+ vehicle is now taking so much more time to "pay off" ...

Plus you will not be polluting the air if you can get your electricity through a Green Plan; also, in an EV you fuel up with your charger at home. Just plug it in, no big deal....200+ mi available every day.

 

[Chrisechild]

.. burned through 59 miles of range for 32 mile loop...

I'm not sure from reading your post if you're aware that the predicted range you saw was based on previous journey efficiency, current ambient temp and other reference points. Your actual consumption on that 32mile trip was higher than the predicted range... So calculating future efficiency based on the predicted vs real gulf will not be accurate.

Best to monitor you m/kWh readings and calculate from that. Again, apologies if you're doing this already

 

[mmmzon]

No worries and I appreciate the feedback. I was getting approx 1.4 m/kWh so if my math is correct, full 86kWh battery charge would be then good for ~140 miles of distance max, which is roughly 3 days of commute worth. My problem is that I live in a valley and to get anywhere I need to climb a pretty steep hill at motorway speeds. More, I need to join the motorway uphill with a very short runway so that adds to the whole rather high power consumption. Traffic is pretty heavy in the mornings, meaning I do need to get up to running speed quickly or risk being stuck on the road side.

I understand the whole predictive character of the range meter. The only difference is that with my current diesel Q5 my range even with the uphill driving is 500+ miles (longer flat stretches easily surpass 650 miles on a tank) and the predictometer is pretty accurate there as far as distance on a tank is concerned. Doing the math the whole math of running EV being cheaper than gas does not seem to hold much at least in my conditions (commute, distance, hilly country side, very low temperature winters).

Perhaps I should try to see if I can loan eTron for a week or so and give it an honest every day drive in standard conditions to see how it fits my expectations. I am concerned about committing such a large lump of money into something that might turn out to be suboptimum at this time. Battery technology is expected to evolve in the next 2-3 years into something much better capacity and perhaps weight-wise.

 

[Steviestainz]

I've had a chance to download the latest data to supplement my original post (this thread) in order to present the 2020-21 values in addition to those from 2019. I won't do a whole rehash of the explanation of my driving style and ambient temperature relationship to economy but it's still holding up pretty well.

Here's some figures in summary (e-tron 55 Launch edition with 21" wheels):

Average consumption: 1.70 miles / kWh
Average journey: 8 miles
Average speed: 12.3 mph

907 journeys completed between Jun 2019 and Jan 2021

There is still a clear relationship between average speed and consumption. When the vehicle is not doing exclusively stop/start journeys or slow average speeds the consumption typically improves toward >2 mi / kWh.

Average ambient temperature (orange) remains the determining factor for consumption over time. Best consumption is experienced during summer months, poorest during the winter.

I'd love to see comparative data from other similar cars / locations!

 

[Chrisechild]

Thanks @Steviestainz fascinating data and great commentary.

My e-tron seems to perform better at zero and sub zero temperatures than it does at ~5degrees. Its in the range of maybe 4-7 degrees where no matter how I drive I seem not to get my usual efficiency 'score'. I don't drive to get the efficiency up, I drive to enjoy the car. But even in 'joy' mode I know my baselines and 0°c gets me better results than 4-7°c.

Drove a bit today and got 2-2.2m/kWh, 10°c ambient.
Yesterday did longer than usual journey managed 2m/kWh - 3.5°c ambient.
If its a middling 5°c though its normally 1.6-1.8m/kWh

 

[Steviestainz]

Yesterday did longer than usual journey managed 2m/kWh - 3.5°c ambient.
If its a middling 5°c though its normally 1.6-1.8m/kWh

That‘s fairly consistent with my data right now too, and the additional 400 or so journeys I added are in line with the first 500 so there’s no reason to believe that the cold weather effect isn’t accurate.

 

[mmmzon]

Very little experience to add but over the last 3 days (I am driving demo eTron 55), on my daily commute loop, I am getting 2.5 m/kWh one way (from work) and barely 1.2 m/kWh the other way (to work). The driving style does not change that much and regularly, I think. What does change is the constant elevation change - in the morning I have to climb out of the valley at motorway speeds (even though I do try to keep it below 75 mph) and that is killing my consumption, no matter what I do. Return is more gentle, with a few smaller hills to climb over but then it is mostly downhill from there. Average is 1.85 m/kWh both ways and that is all with all fancy toys switched off (no AC, no radio, etc.). We have positive temperatures, it was +5C today in the morning on the drive in.

With 1.85 figure, that translates to 155 miles on a full battery. By the end of the day I will have close to 100 miles done but I think the picture is forming. It is a heavy car and moving it up the hill just consumes a lot of energy. There is no way around it, the physics still applies no matter what we do and how we play it out.

For comparison, my current diesel Q5 V6 gets 33 - 35 mpg on the same loop, pretty much irrespective of the weather conditions, so eTron is still better at around 62 mpg equivalent but it is far away from rated 78 mpg equivalent. I guess driving on a flat might get me there, but not much flat area in here ...

 

[WetEV]

I'm in Puget Sound coastal, north of Seattle, fairly near the water. Time period is 2019-08-22 to recent.
Note this is the inverse kWh/100 miles of the above m/kWh.

Slower speeds in nice weather are much lower consumption as I turn the heat and AC off, and just have the fan running. Set the temperature to "MAX COOL", with the AC off. The very lowest points are one-way trips downhill, shouldn't count. I've never gotten better than about 25 kWh/100miles or 4m/kWh for a round trip.

Note the log scale for miles.

Longer trips generally get better economy, even at an often higher speed. Everything that is 1, 2 or 3miles is mostly one-way to shopping/eating or to a nearby trailhead parking lot. Getting 25kWh/100miles or 4 miles per kWh is hard, need good weather and limited speeds. My long term average is 42.6 kWh/100miles, or 2.3 miles/kWh.

 

[mmmzon]

2.3 m/kWh is close to EPA rating: 77.5215 MPGe - nice !

I fear Colorado road will suck the life of this car given how heavy it is. Flat roads are here at a premium, especially in the area I usually travel.