My love affair with the Audi’s goes a (very) long way. The first one I drove, when I was a young law student, was the Audi 50. It was a test car, for the car column of the weekly illustration magazine “De Post”, where my father was editor in chief. I vividly remember this “mini Audi”, nimble, vivid, well styled with a fake wood finished dashboard as a touch of luxury. It was developed as early as 1970, when the engineers at Audi NSU Auto Union AG started work on the project, spearheaded by Chief Technical Officer Ludwig Kraus, (who had developed earlier also the Audi 100, which established Audi as a premium brand.)
My father and I found it a vivid and wonderful car. Light it was, the NSU engineers in Neckarsulm, where the car was initially developed, knew everything about “Leichtbau”, or the art of making light cars. This car was also to become the first… VW Polo, rolling off the Wolfsburg production lines in March 1975. The Audi bug continued: I personally owned for many years an automatic Audi 80 S, and yes, I presently own an A5 Cabrio, designed by Walter Da Silva, a beauty with – of course- an Audi Exclusiv leather interior.
But let’s now turn to the present electric age, behind the wheel in the stylish cabin of the face lifted Q4 e-tron. Just read further!
Hans Knol ten Bensel
Facelift brings more for the eye and improved efficiency and range…
The Q4 e-tron was launched in 2021, and for this bestseller, it was time for a facelift. The grille is now color matched, it carries new LED lights front and rear, and in the superbly designed cabin you can now optionally enjoy a third screen exclusively for the passenger. It also gets an improved version of the permanently excited synchronous motor driving the rear wheels. Better battery efficiency, faster charging, and bi-directional capability. Read more below…
Indeed, externally the car really looks attractive. We like the color match of the grille, with the The S line variant adding vertical blades in Selenite silver matte to the corners of the front and rear bumpers. The whole car looks elegant and also muscular. We love it from every angle, and we liked also the 5 spoke “aero” alloy wheels on our test car.
Interior: stylish panache…
The designers brought true Audi panache into the redesign of the dashboard. It impresses with fit and finish, and gives you this unmistakable premium “Audi” feel. We like the matte aluminum inserts. Its centerpiece is the panoramic display, pairing an 11.9″ instrument cluster and a 12.8″ MMI touch display with large tiles for a quick overview of features and services. Indeed, for the first time in this segment, an optional 12″ passenger display is also available – the largest ever in an Audi, featuring a customizable standby design.
Our test car came with an optional augmented reality head-up display. This projects information onto the windshield in two layers: in the upper layer, turn arrows from the navigation system, starting points and destinations, and prompts from selected assist systems appear in the appropriate position on top of the real environment. Below this, the status layer shows speed, traffic signs, and assistance and navigation icons, visually placed around three meters ahead of the driver. Wonderful and intuitive…
There are four easily accessible charging options for smartphones: two cooled inductive charging trays (up to 15 watts each) and two USB-C ports under the center armrest.
Driving: comfortable and sporting
Our test car came in the 210 kW performance version, and this is synonymous with brilliant performance. It sprints from 0 to 100 km/h in 6,6 seconds, and top speed is limited to 180 km/h. But the beauty lies of course in the whisper smoothness of how all this power is delivered.
The Q4 offers you the choice of several driving modes, and we chose most of the time the balanced mode, which is an ideal mix between comfort and sportiness. We enjoyed also the three regeneration modes, but were also truly impressed by the “auto” mode, which is fed by navigation and sensors monitoring surrounding traffic.
Besides, our test car came with the Adaptive driving assistant plus is available for additional convenience – it helps with acceleration, braking, maintaining speed and distance, and lane guidance. It works ever so smoothly, gently coasting wherever possible when you lift your right foot, and smoothly slowing down to a full stop when the vehicle ahead does so too.
It makes city driving a wonderfully relaxing affair. Our test car came with a superb Sonos audio system, and you can imagine how I enjoyed every minute behind the wheel.
The comfort of the Q4 is outstanding, also the standard sport seats deserve an accolade. Besides boulevard driving and motorway trips in “comfort” mode, the Audi lives also up to its iconic tradition of sportiness. You can really have a go on winding roads. The steering is precise, the point of gravity is quite low with the big 82 kWh battery sitting quite deep in the MEB electric platform that is also used for the VW ID.4 and the Skoda Enyaq.
This means that the Q4 holds the road really well… We also found it quite nimble in town and narrow streets. Of course, the surround view camera’s help when manoeuvring in tight parking spaces, and parking alongside kerbs.
Consumption depends of course on your driving style, weather conditions, you name it. The manufacturer quotes a range of up to 578 km with a combined consumption between 18,4 and 15,6 kWh/100 km, which proved indeed quite realistic and achievable.
The Audi Q4 e-tron is the first Audi with bidirectional charging. With Vehicle-to-Load (V2L), the car directly powers electric devices. It does so via a domestic power socket in the trunk (providing continuous power of 2.3 kW at 230 V AC) or an optional adapter on the side charging port with a domestic power socket (2.3 kW) or a camping power socket (3.6 kW). Ideal for your electric mountain bike!
The DC charging capacity of the 82 kWh battery in the Audi Q4 SUV4 performance increases from 175 kW to up to 185 kW – charging from 10 to 80 percent at a fast-charging station in just 27 minutes. Up to 185 km of range can be added in ten minutes…
The luggace space is quite good, with 520 litres seats up and 1,490 litres seats down. There is a compartment underneath the floor in which you can tuck away the charging cables.
Infotainment: versatile and state of the art…
We were also impressed by the quality and layout of the information we got on the touchscreens in front of the driver and in the centre of the dashboard. Chrystal clear maps, superb navigation, clear layout of functions and apps to choose from on the central screen, with functions like for instance the choice between different “ambiance” moods.
So for example your display will show a forest picture with soothing music when you take a power nap… Of course, you can adjust your optional Sonos system also and choose between concert, lounge, neutral and podcast sound setups…
We liked also the simple and clean controls on the central console: intuitive and to the point.
Conclusion
The Q4 hits the mark again, offering an ideal combination between style, size, practicality, build quality, performance and efficiency.
It looks very good, has wonderful colour combinations, exudes the unmistakable Audi panache and aura. It comes with quite a few power combinations, starting with a 150 kW e-motor at the rear wheels and a 63 kW battery, up to a 250 kW and the 82 kWh battery for the top Quattro version. But the performance version we drove was (already) truly impressive…
Hans Knol ten Bensel
Photographers’ notes: We used here again our Fujifilm Finepix FinePix S100FS, and despite the fact that its design dates back to 2008, now almost two decades ago, it still delivers absolutely professional results.
Of course, the definition of the electronic viewfinder as well as the bigger foldable screen is not up to present standards, but the actual sensor and the Fujinon 28-400 mm (35 mm equivalent) lens really mean business. Note that the photos you see here are compressed to cope with the website technical requirements…so the original photos are still more detailed. Remember, I bought this versatile camera used some years ago for just 59 Euros… The photo of the camera here above is taken with my Xiaomi smartphone.
Hans Knol ten Bensel
