Yahoo Autos 2024 Audi Q8 E-Tron Road Test: Upgraded (and renamed) EV is a great day tripper
SEA RANCH, Calif. – Take a deep breath. Thumb the electronic shifter toggle into Park. Get comfy. Enjoy everything else about the 2024 Audi Q8 E-Tron besides driving it.
The road ahead may be spectacular, but it’s also under construction. Automated red lights meter traffic at various one-way portions, which means you’re inevitably stuck waiting around for extended periods of time. And worse than that, once underway, there will still be traffic ahead. Actually, “traffic” is too kind. There will be a succession of leisurely moving leisure vehicles, which in my case at various points was a Ram ProMaster RV by coachbuilder Entegra that might have topped 25 at one point, a 2003 Silverado HD with a bed-mounted camper towing an Airstream, and whatever the hell this was.
Such a pace is basically what you can expect your driving experience to entail while traversing the California 1 north of San Francisco. Its spectacular scenery rightfully draws a crowd, which means you’re stuck in that crowd. Learn to accept that, and you’ll have a much better time. Be behind the wheel of the Q8 E-Tron and you just might have the makings of one of the most pleasurable and memorable drives in recent memory – I know I did.
Q8 E-Tron would be the new name for the electric SUV formerly known as just E-Tron (you can dive deeper into the changes in our Q8 E-Tron and SQ8 E-Tron First Drive Review). Audi says this was to emphasize this particular vehicle’s status as a range-topping blah blah blah, but come on, it’s to make it a lot easier to differentiate it with the E-Tron GT, Q4 E-Tron and whatever other E-Trons are coming down the pipe in Audi’s electrified future. That said, it is, in fact, a mid-cycle refresh of the previous E-Tron, and not a new electric version of the Audi Q8. The two Q8s are different vehicles, albeit with similar footprints and feature content.
For the purposes of a road trip like this one up the coast and back from Healdsburg in Sonoma wine country, the Q8 E-Tron is now good for 285 miles with its SUV body style, and 296 for its “Coupe” body style that to date has represented only about 10-15% of sales. That’s a substantial improvement over the outgoing SUV’s 226 miles thanks to a new, more efficiently designed battery pack good for 114 kilowatt-hours versus 95 kWh. It also charges quicker: a still so-so 170-kW max versus 150 at public fast chargers. AC home charging is either an equally so-so 9.6 kW or, with the optional second charger, a nutty 19.2 kW that should futureproof your car for whatever advanced home chargers are introduced (my state-of-the-art Wallbox Pulsar tops out at the same 11.5 kW as many of today’s other EVs). All told, I would return after a day of driving – mostly leisurely, but some bits more vigorous – with 61 miles left. Good thing it got those 59 extra miles, eh?
Besides the upgraded battery, those extra miles also result from the redesigned exterior’s aerodynamic improvements that reduce drag by 6%. They also improve cabin noise, which Audi says is as quiet or quieter than the A8. Or, if you prefer, my iPhone’s decibel meter app registered an average of 44 dB during a two-minute steady cruise at 60 mph. That’s basically the same volume as an RS Q8 … parked.
