Audi Q8 e-Tron | Great Ride, Average Range

The Audi Q8 e-tron. Now, this is a fully electric vehicle, and unlike the regular Q8, dimensionally it's smaller. When you look at the outside and the inside, it is, you know, it's more on the compact SUV segment. It has the dimensions on the inside in terms of cargo capacity, more like a wagon. With the seats folded down on the back, it's really deep, but you lose some of the height of a more traditional SUV, and that's okay because if you're in a city or you're in a tighter space, you're going to appreciate that it's a more compact, and it feels smaller to drive. And when you get on the inside space, you know, look at things like the A-pillars, the visibility is pretty good in here, and it's very traditional Audi stuff that we've seen for a long time. On the outside, it is a very conservative look, and I'm telling you, this brown color, brownish color, doesn't do it much justice. It slides under the radar. It is, you don't know it's an electric vehicle, which if you like that, you're going to love this. It's just very, very corporate looking, and when you go back to the interior space, you're going to see very clearly that they've been carrying over this look and feel for a long period of time. Audi was one of the first to implement like an all-digital gauge cluster, the two screens for HVAC and infotainment. It just, again, they haven't evolved it all that much, and if you like this style, it offers a very clean aesthetic if you like it, and if you're somebody that is like me, I feel like it is a definite step backwards, namely in HVAC, because where your HVAC is at, your eye line is always down. You're always looking down, and you always have to look at it to interact with it, which takes your eyes off the road. That's the fundamental flaw with a design like this. So we've talked about this Audi like layout to death. The main thing you're going to want to know is seating comfort is tremendous. It's really good. They make one of the better luxury car seats. The back seat space is excellent, although there's no recline. It's a two-row vehicle. You get a sense that this thing is screwed together far better than many of its other luxury competitors. That's the big thing. The isolation build quality of the interior is it matches the aesthetic of being very plain and clean. One of the takeaways you're going to notice is how is it for utilization of like storage. It's a mixed bag. The doors are fairly sized, but you're not going to fit a big water bottle in it. The center armrest has this huge space here for like, you know, all your stuff, but it's easy to get things lost down here. There's a wireless charger, so if you drop your key down there, it's going to get jammed in. So there's weird usability things, but overall, Audi does things really well here in terms of making you feel like you're in a very luxury, refined space. The audio system, this Bang & Olufsen test very well. There's minimal, minimal issues with harmonic distortion, and your frequency response is pretty even. It does trend a little bit higher in the bass, but most people like that response. You can tune some of it out with the EQ, but it's exactly what you expect in a car of this type. We're going to head in the shop, and Jack's going to tell you about the mechanical bits. We're in the shop with the Audi Q8 e-tron. So what is this? Well, it is the electrified variant of the Q8. It takes the same architecture. However, the body itself is largely different. This is on a very modified version of the MLB Evo, now rocking two electric motors and a battery pack in the center of this vehicle, which naturally increases rigidity. From a packaging perspective, because of the batteries, because of the electric motor, because of the aerodynamic changes, the body is dimensionally different, and as Mark talked about, there's slightly less interior cargo space. You get two different body styles for the Q8 e-tron. You get the coupe, aka the sportback, or the regular SUV. The sportback is slightly more aerodynamic, at 0.27 coefficient of drag, versus the SUV, which is 0.29. There are lots of aero treatments like curtains in the front, little spoilers on the bottom of this thing, the battery pack's been dimpled. All of this is in the desire to increase aerodynamic efficiency and, of course, decrease NVH. Being far more rigid as well, less of the vibration, less of the sound makes its way into the cabin. This is a very, very quiet car. When it comes to the battery pack and the electric motors, at least as of now in the U.S., there's one battery pack size, and it has a usable capacity of 106 kilowatt hours, and under ideal circumstances on a level two charger, it can go from 10 to 80 percent about 31 minutes, and it should not throttle down that charging speed between 10 and 80 percent, at least according to Audi. The electric motors, compared to the prior generation e-tron models, have also become more efficient, going from 12 windings to 14. When it comes to suspension, this thing comes standard with AirRide, so it does ride very, very well. All the suspension links are aluminum. It's multi-link in the front, multi-link in the rear, and it does look like a premium car underneath. The last thing to talk about is power output. Under peak conditions, this makes a little bit over 400 horsepower, and it's good for 0 to 60 in the mid-fives, but that's not what this car is about. It is supposed to be a luxury boat, so let's go take this for a quick drive with Mark. Mark, Audi EV time. We're in the Q8. Try some launch control. Edtron. Edtron, yeah. That feeling of 400 horsepower, Mark, in complete silence. We're in dynamic mode. I'll tell you what I like about the acceleration, especially up a line, is it doesn't make you sick. It's like it doesn't have that first 10 percent of nauseating compression into the seat. It just smoothly ramps into it, even dynamic mode. I think that sums up kind of this entire experience of driving the Etron. I had zero expectations going into this. I saw the pictures of it, and I literally passed out looking at them. It's such an underwhelming, understated car. Even the color, the interior, it's just basically... This is worst case scenario, to be fair. It's corporate Audi stuff. However, when you drive this for the first time, much like the launch, much like the way that this rides and handles, tell me a little bit about what I'm about to say, Jack. It is unbelievably well calibrated for smooth sailing. This is, as I like to call it, yacht rock smooth. You could be Michael McDonald or Kenny Loggins, and yes, you'll never make it past number three due to your smoothness, but this is an exceptionally comfortable car. In some corporate, you know, lease-mobile, luxury boat, this is exactly what I want. I don't care about acceleration numbers. Yes, it does 60 in under six-ish seconds. Yeah, basically like every single car. What I care about is it's using the battery packs to make this ultra refined. You can't hear any drivetrain noise, the calibration of the throttle or the accelerator pedal, because it's an EV vehicle. You literally could not tell that it wasn't some like ice drivetrain with a CVT. It's that smooth to accelerate. I mean, it does everything well. Yes, you could have two broken arms, as you like to call it, and be able to steer this thing, but you're comfortable the whole time. You're isolated, and the ride quality, particularly after the XM. Oh yeah. God, this thing is amazing. This is what's amazing about this thing, right? Like, I know we're, there's two sides. It's, if you understand what you're getting into here, you've already made the excuses for the fact that it's a very vanilla car. Less than 300 mile range, at least in our temperature with these wheels. It's 274 from a full charge. So you have all these factors working against it, but we just got out of the Type S MDX, the BMW XM, the X7, all these really higher-end luxury cars. This is, to Audi's credit, every time you get in this, and every time I get into an Audi, I'm like, why do I buy anything else? Because it's amazing how well they know how to tune and calibrate suspension. It is like so, everything is perfect with it. It handles every pavement type. It doesn't feel like a complete boat. It isolates out everything, and if you're, you're wondering as a company how you'd set up a suspension as a street vehicle that makes everything disappear. As a luxury barge. As a luxury barge, this is it. This is what everybody's chasing, and they're one of the few companies that can do this. They're using the air ride, the adaptive dampers, the chassis tuning between the front and rear subframe, all of the kinematics to near perfection. Not for a driving experience. You're buying this not because you want it to handle well. Right, right. And it handles fine. Yeah, no, it handles fine. You're buying this that, because when you're sitting in traffic, you're stuck on the highway, you can get a massage, you can be in utter, utter comfort, and over bad pavement types, like every major city, or like where we're at with all the expansion joints, you never notice it. And I think what's even better about it, and I guess this is the main talking point, is the EV part helps to turn what they already do good into something even better. And, you know, you can make a soft riding car. It's, it's easy to do. You, you can do it, but then you have like the secondary body motions, or lack of body control, this floatiness, or even some of the things where we've seen in Genesis products, where they're really soft, but when you hit those sudden impacts, you still feel like those low frequency vibrations through the body. And that's something we just noticed with the, what is it, the CX-90, and even the Volvos, they have this, they're kind of soft until they hit an impact, and the whole car shakes like it's not screwed together, connected front to the rear. When you hit something in here, it's all solid. It feels like one solid piece, and everything is isolated out and insulated. It's, it's just incredible. And the interior is better for it, too. There's no rattles in here. There's no creaks. It's quiet. Even with the glass, or the shade back, you can leave the shade open, and you don't hear like reverberations. I love the luxury experience part of this car. In a luxury aspect, when you electrify MLB Evo, it takes an already very good luxury platform and turns it into something even more premium. But we've talked about all the positives. If you have any cons, other than the range, we're going to talk about the range and cost. And again, that's a compromise you sort of accept with this generation EV vehicle. What, what do you not like about this thing? I don't like that it's so corporate Audi. I mean, there's not that there's anything wrong, and I talked about it on the interior space, but it's just now all of the tech and all the utilization of this, all these cars feel the same. They're very kind of cardboard at this point, and while they might have been the first to implement all the screens and all this, it doesn't feel like a particularly special interior space and exterior space. So while you have all this refinement, I get in this car, and that's the X factor. Some people don't care. They just want like conservative, conservative, conservative. I just feel like there's little things they could do here that their competitors are starting to do with geometry, shapes, textures, some style aspect to it that doesn't feel so corporate. It's so corporate inside here that it could be VW. It could be Porsche in some ways. It's just, that's the one thing that I can't. Yeah, that's the German car thing, right? I mean, BMW is getting away from that, but basically to a fault. Yes, right. This, you know, if you like a more classically styled German vehicle that is understated, that again does the luxury lease mobile thing really well. I don't love EVs, but this is a great implementation of EV technology. It is for this generation. It's definitely, if you're wondering, oh, everybody loves Teslas, just get a Model 3. I said this before about another car, but if you're a Model 3 owner and you get in here, this is how things are supposed to be screwed together and feel as a driving experience. Particularly from a dynamics perspective. Yes, for sure. All right, with that, Mark, let's head into the final thoughts. All right, Jack. Talking about conservative, I thought you were a Chevy celebrity sport owner. What was that called? Eurosport. Eurosport. Yeah, I go golfing with my Eurosport still. It still wows the people at the country club. Image is the thing that makes the difference. Image is what got me where I am today. You got to dress right, you got to live in the right place, and you got to drive the right car. You know what I mean? You bet, JB. This car, for example, is ideal for our situation. It's good looking, modern, conservative. It looks like a successful businessman's car, but it's got plenty of room for the family, and lots of room back here. In fact, 16.2 cubic feet of room, you know, which is plenty for the important things like golf clubs. It's the perfect car for all occasions. I'll grant you that, but don't you think it's a little, well, too conservative? Too conservative? My boy, in the financial business, it's hard to get too conservative, but I certainly wouldn't put this car in that category. I mean, look at it. It's as modern as they come, and there's certainly nothing conservative about its performance. You just rode in it. Have you ever had a better ride? Oh no, I rode just fine. I mean, real smooth, and it had plenty of go when you needed it. Like, getting through that last light in the yellow, JB, makes me kind of glad I had my seat belt on. Eddie, I think we better go check in before we miss our tea time. If you're going to be successful, you got to look successful, and that's what my celebrity does for me. Who's got a 76 Fury? He has, and I've been trying to convince him to trade it in on a new celebrity. Sounds like pretty good advice to me. Why didn't you want to get a celebrity like JB suggested? I never said I didn't want a celebrity. As a matter of fact... He thinks it's too conservative. A celebrity? I never said that. You don't know your cars very well if you think the celebrity is too conservative. In fact, you couldn't be more wrong. The celebrity is one of the standards for modern cars on the road today. Would you listen to him? It was one of the first front-wheel-drive midsize cars. You can get a multi-port fuel-injected V6, and practically all the options people order anyway come standard. Of course, the Mazda 929 can give me those same things too, at a pretty stiff price. Mazda? Not in my parking lot. Final thoughts on the Q8 e-tron. Everything that has needed to be said has been said. This car, in terms of drivability and comfort, is amazing for an EV. It shows you exactly what you can do with this platform or electric cars if you know how to tune a chassis and suspension, and Audi is amazing at it. The only other brand that does it remotely close is Porsche, and you have to go way more expensive than this. The car, as a whole, is very good to drive. You wish for more things, of course. You wish for more range. You wish for a lot of the things that you could have that you can't have in this generation. I set it in the drive. I set it on the interior. The biggest issue of the e-tron or this generation car is it feels very, very corporate and generic. In some cases, quite cardboard. It's hyper conservative exterior and interior, and if that's the type of buyer or person that you are, you like this aesthetic, you're going to love the driving experience because the interior, isolation, ride quality, all the things that Audi does great, you're going to be super impressed. Thanks for watching. I'll see you next video.