Arrival of Audi’s first electric super-SUV synchs nicely with the roll out of truly fast charging stations.

Price: $193,150 as tested.
Powertrain: Tri-motor electric, 370kW/973Nm, two stage planetary with single speed, claimed energy use 25.6-28.1 kWh/100km.
Vital statistics: 4902mm long, 1976mm wide, 1616mm high, 2928mm wheelbase.
For: Spectacular performance, awesome long distance car, a true technology landmark.
Against: Awkward phone charger location, recharging downtime much longer without hyperchargers.

 RANGE is always a big consideration for anyone going electric, but with an increasing count of new products delivering honest ability to crack 300kms’ or more from a charge, outright anxiety has surely diminished.

Now the focus is more to do with range accuracy; how realistic are they at at gauging this; and how much effort toward adopting an ‘EV driving style’ is really required to meet any targets?

 Audi’s family of e-tron sports utilities attract through being fairly orthodox in general look and, notwithstanding there’s no engine noise up front nor emissions from the rear, driving operability.

Really, they’re EVs that aren’t too EV-ish. That could be a good thing. Brands are identifying hands-off sells better than too much hands-on. The difference between individual drivers’ abilities and styles and whether or not making the effort to drive in a range-friendly way is something many users don’t really want to bother with. Sometimes they feel it’s just not within their capability. My past experience with e-trons is that, when it comes to range estimation, there’s a high degree of integrity going on.

 That’s all the more important with the e-tron S Sportback. This latest addition is an interesting and exciting device, as it is effectively being a more amped version of the e-tron 55 Sportback in S-Line spec tested a year ago.

 Same swoopy coupe silhouette and solid stance. Same interior layout. Same 700kg battery pack, rated for 96kWh net capacity, of which 87kWh is availed.

 Same. But not. The $20,000 premium to buy an S measures in kit, kapow … and motor count.

 The S-Line has the e-tron 55’s two motor powertrain, one at each end, offering 300kW and 664Nm on overboost. The S is Audi going further than even Telsa dares. It’s the world’s first and, so far only, three-motor electric car. One up front, two at the back, packaged together in a single housing to save space yet each with their own single-speed gearbox and electronic control unit. The motor in the nose, meantime, is the beefier one from the dual motor cars that sits in the back of those.

 The technical benefit is that it allows for a more accurate, faster form of torque vectoring than a regular sports differential can offer. It also – though this was not tested – allows this to be the first e-tron that can drift. Audi’s ‘Franken-tron’.

 Three motors make for more oomph, and then some. It develops a combined 320kW and 808Nm in Normal mode, rising to 370kW and 973Nm in Dynamic. That’s enough heft to make the car’s 2.6-ish tonne all but negligible.

 Acceleration is … well, stunning. As in ‘serious sports car’ stunning. There was one moment during test, I’ll describe later, that left me gob-smacked.

 Even in Normal mode, it’s a 5.1 seconds’ car. So, 0.8s better than the S-Line. In Dynamic, the clock stops at 4.5 seconds. That’s sniffing the metaphorical tailpipes of the mighty e-tron GT, Audi’s twin to the Porsche Taycan and its fastest production product. Top speed of 210kmh outright might seem too sensible, but it’s not how fast it ultimately goes, but how quickly it gets there. Which is very quickly indeed.

 The catch? Admission price mainly, but also elevated energy consumption. Three motors makes for an extra mouth to feed. Audi claims a WLTP range of 380km, down somewhat on the S-Line’s estimated 430km, and obviously a factor with intention to nail Auckland to Palmerston North. My longest single driving day in an electric, ever, in the shortest range big e-tron. Nothing like a challenge, right?

 Still, plenty of positives would surely come. I’m really fond of Audi’s big electric SUVs; they feel substantial but not so big as to be daunting. With quattro, very good brakes and excellent tyres, they have a reassuringly solid driving feel in any weather and surface condition. Even though I feel the centre touch display screen requires work to update its appearance sort the haptic prompts, the tech is easy to understand and operate. Foremost, they are hugely comfortable; Audi needs no lesson in seat design and how to sort a brilliant driving position.

 Still … there’s the range. Even the direct run, keeping west of Lake Taupo, is a 513km by Google Maps’ calculation. Even if I were to hyper-mile and even if the car’s trip computer was to achieve total accuracy in its distance-to-empty prediction, the S would conk out well short of home.

 Two periods of recharging were required. The first, at Bombay, an hour south of my departure point, Mt Smart in central Auckland, and right on my drive route, and the other at Taupo, which meant a deviation from the fastest route but with such minor impact – it adds just seven minutes to the calculated time – as to not matter.

 Why those places? Because I planned to use the country’s gruntiest rechargers.

 E-tron ownership gives access, initially at no cost to the driver, to rechargers operated by the dominant provider of on-the-go commercial replenishment.

 The ChargeNet network is awesome; there are very few spots left hostile to any EV, even the really worn-out, smaller battery types. But most of their locations provision 50kW chargers, which while suited to every modern EV are not quite optimal for the big battery stuff, due to the replenishment rate.

 To meet this, ChargeNet has started to supplement those ‘rapid’ chargers with big boy 300kW ‘hyperchargers’. It’s the strategic installation of these that lifts, and perhaps even completely changes, the game for the Audis and all others running 800v systems, because they’re so much faster.

 How fast? Imagine electricity gushing out from a fire hose rather than a garden variety one. After it’s big drive, I hooked the e-tron S to a local 50kW unit, with intent to bring the battery from 30 percent charge to 80 percent. That took 90 minutes. More than double the duration on a hypercharger to achieve 15 percent to 100 percent.

 The 300kW infrastructure is a work in progress. North Island availability of presently only reaches as far south as Taupo, but I reckoned that would play perfectly. Though not, perhaps, with a lot of margin to spare. So it proved.

 Pace obviously impacts consumption, but so too is how the car is configured. Audi NZ boss Dean Sheed runs an S in personal use and was kind enough to assist in the optimal configuration for the drive.

 All up, there are seven different driving modes: Efficiency, Comfort, Auto, Individual, Off-road, All-road and Dynamic. As much as ‘Efficency’ delivers obvious benefits, Sheed had no hesitation.

 For this trip, the car needed to be both economical but also at prime driving state. So Dynamic, with reminder at every restart to give the gear selector a downward tap, to get it into a regular Drive setting rather than the quicker-reacting ‘Sport’ setting it defaults to. The end effect is ‘stonk with sensibility’, the car hunkering down in a low-drag, but also most menacing corner-hugging stance. One more tweak: Extend the replenishment maximum from its 80 percent default to 100 percent, a simple matter of opening up the display, touching the ‘max’ bar and running your finger to to the right.

 On heading off at 12.30pm, the car was registering 324kms range, so pretty full yet conceivably perhaps a bit marginal to make Taupo if traffic was heavy.

 After an hour, I was at the Bombay site. There was a bit of faffing about finding it (my fault, not their’s, despite the sat nav brilliantly giving the location of every ChargeNet site, I’d misread a basic direction).

 The big chargers are a bit different to operate than the 50kWs. Whereas there’s a specific step-by-step to initiate the 50kW units, with the big boys there’s not a lot of coherent guidance. You just wave the RFID in front on the sensor and wait for something to happen. Worked for me, anyway.

 Still, ‘hyper’ is well-named. Just 18 minutes’ down time – during which I fruitlessly searched for a public convenience – took the battery to 100 percent, range lifting from 297km to 344km.

 Back on the road at 1.20pm, traffic was easy and so, too the driving. Despite being on fat Hankooks, the Audi is well-insulated from road noise in general, but all the moreso on motorway tarmac. Audi’s active cruise control also really suits the electric drivetrain; it even has a degree of autonomy, following the lane markings on its own.

 Taking 1B to avoid Hamilton required a return to greater driver involvement, but without any frustration.

 It’s a large car, yes, and unavoidably heavy, too – basically the same kilo count as the obviously more substantial Chevrolet Silverado I’d driven on these self-same roads just a week before. However, when it comes to driving feel and road positioning, the Audi is far more succinct.

 Consumption-wise, though, maybe they’re not worlds apart. Be that it may that the cost of electricity is a fraction of that of petrol, this Audi settling by now into an average 25.8kWh consumption identified it as among EV-doms bigger eaters.

 I called up a mate who’d driven the same route just weeks prior in a single motor Hyundai Ioniq 5 to enquire how my ride compared to his. He laughingly confirmed his consumption was considerably lower. Okay, so mine’s a serious performance car. Regardless the diet, they always consume more.

 By Tokoroa, distance to empty was down to 166km, but from there it was only 67kms to Taupo, so I wasn’t fazed. More of a concern was the weather. Radio news was alerting to the East Coast being hammered, but it seemed some of that front had moved into the central North Island. Rain had intensified when I located the Taupo charger (again, challenging, it’s cornered away in a carpark adjacent to the Burger King drive-through) and the temperature was dropping.

 The car, by now, had 106kms’ range, so I knew I’d be here for a while. Though not as long as it turned out. As at Bombay there are two chargers, each able to replenish three cars on the go. The Auckland region location, at time of driving, was down to one unit, the other being covered in tape.

 At Taupo, the first unit I tried was troublesome. It would synch with the car, yet did not initiate replenishment. Finally, I shifted to the sister unit and, to my relief, found it operated perfectly.

 Still, all this made for a longer-than-hoped-for stop; departure at 5.18pm was a full hour after arrival. Of that, 39 minutes were spent on the hook, the car uplifting 64.1kWh (at 60 cents a minute) but the input slowing dramatically, to just 30kW for the last 10 minutes, which is a dribble. Again, it was a full replenishment, though this time estimated range was 315km. Yes, I was surprised, too.

 Would that be enough to get home? Conceivably, yes; the distance is just 242km by most direct route, plus around another 20km, because I’m out in the country.

 Even so, it wasn’t until I was clear of the Desert Road that I could fully relax. The Hatepe hill sector out of Taupo taxed more than I’d imagined, with the range estimate falling below 300km before the summit. Fortunately, what this feature takes from one side, it gives back on the other.

 Heading down the southward ascent, the car’s brake regeneration proved a Godsend. Activating the left paddle twice enabled a lot of restoration, but even once was rather effective too, and less sapping on pace. Kicking out requires just a brake pedal tap, permitting in this instance coasting all along the straight beyond. It’s a thoroughly sorted and effective system. 

 The last sector of the drive, Waiouru to the Manawatu, was dark, cold and the rain was hammering down, yet this part was highly familiar and by now I felt enough familiarity with the car to push a bit harder, without going silly.

 Or, that was intent: In overtaking situations, it’s a car that needs little prompting to blur the scenery on a loaded throttle. There was one occasion, on an uphill overtaking lane, that lifted the curtain to just how much it has to offer.

 As I began to quietly zip by two trucks banging up the left lane at 70kmh, a set of headlights came racing up behind; a V8 Commodore in a heck of a hurry.

 Rather than have GM’s monster bite into the boot of my car, I gave the throttle more. More than it needed, really. It was a true and wholly raw soul-baring moment. I’d already been holding 100kmh, but the thrust was massive.

 In particular, it was an action stations’ signal for the motor up front. Until now, it had been hard to pinpoint exactly how much pull was coming from that one. Now it was clear. I felt I was getting the lot.

 For a split second, the car’s nose twitched sideways on the rain-slick surface. The S then simply went into hyperdrive. I reined back hurriedly from the summit, but by then those headlights behind were already suddenly much smaller. Funnily enough, all this happened while I’d been listening to a podcast about land speed record cars.

 Circumspection prevailed for the rest of the journey. The car’s excellent headlamps were a boon when, coming around a bend, I picked out a shadowy shape looming out of the darkness. Turned out to be a caravan without any form of illumination. The e-tron S has fantastic brakes. There are six-pot calipers up front. 

 Home at 8.22pm. The rain was hammering by then; I was soaked in the six steps between car and front door. Estimated remaining range? Just 75kms. Total distance covered: 528.1km. Average consumption was up to 26.3kWh/100km. Switch off, shut down. No heat-departing ticking from the powertrain; nothing even, from the brakes. If not for the bug spatter, you’d have never known it’d spent a day tripping.

 The car, the conditions, the new challenge from working with a different kind of charger … all these made the drive something of an adventure.

 Sure, there’s no quite getting away from it having taken longer than it would have if a fossil fuelled product had been involved. A diesel likely as not would not have required replenishment. Has a petrol involved, yes, I’d have needed a drink, though down time for that would have been considerably less. Even with a super-fast charger, there’s no splash and dash with electric. 

 On the other hand, it’s unlikely I’d not have stopped at least once somewhere; calls of nature and, probably, a food and drink break. Add those in and the difference in travelling time mightn’t have been so great.

 Also, of course, there’s the actual cost of the journey. On that side of things, no contest. Electricity delivers from ChargeNet on a per-minute rate and the hyperchargers’ kind is the equivalent of 100 octane, but it’s still just 60 cents a minute. And you can achieve up to 400km range in quarter of an hour.

 The consumption rate thereafter depends on how you drive it. The S is not the thriftiest electric and even tough it operates well in its most angelic mode, you can’t imagine that’s why it’ll be bought. It’s certainly capable of being driven quietly, but there’s an edge that’s always there, waiting to be exploited. So the whole ultimate range thing is a bit elastic. Yet, in respect to range accuracy, it’s pretty decent.

 In terms of how it drives? Well, I enjoy the refinement, the swiftness. But the singlemost impressive aspect of this package is its ability to carrying its pace through corners.

 Obviously an electric SUV isn’t going to be the sharpest scalpel, because it is hauling considerable mass. Yet the e-tron S is far from elephantine.

 The new electronic torque vectoring system that uses the rear powertrain’s separate gearboxes to control each wheel’s speed individually is a fantastic asset. The adaptive sports suspension is brilliant, too; particularly so in Dynamic, as expected, but even in Comfort it feels hugely agreeable through corners. Sure, the ride is a bit firm, but them’s the breaks when you buy into a performance car.

 From the driver’s point of view, the way it just hunkers into attacking tight roads is hugely inspiring. In Sport ESC and Dynamic mode, there’s enough rearward shove to set the wheels spinning. So I’ve read.

 The coupe shape means it isn’t as commodious as the regular 55 SUV, but that’s not to say the cabin is tight. Four adults won’t complain. Though boot capacity also drops, it’s only by a smidge. Luggage capacity ranges from 615-1665 litres. IT has the same 1800kg braked towing ability as other e-trons.

 For the S, practicality takes a back seat to plushness. It’s beautifully outfitted; I know that cow hide is increasingly on the outer in these eco-sensitive times, but the Verona leather in this car is lovely. Shame Audi just cannot break from dark trim colour fixations.

 The whole tri-motor thing is, ultimately, an extra layer on icing on an already rich cake. But the wonderful thing about electrics is that it’s allowing makers to explore all sorts of possibilities. You couldn’t ever imagine a three-engined fossil fuelled car for rthe raod, but in electric … heck, why not? It’s no more daft than a Tesla Model S Plaid and, realistically, is a much better product.

 The quality of Audi fit and finishing, it’s customer support … they’re streets ahead. And, if you’re talking pure technology, it’s hard to see how Ingolstadt is in any way off its game.

 Do it again? In a heartbeat.