Audi Q4 e-tron: Living with an EV requires careful recharging planning

Living with an electric car without a proper car charger at home isn’t impossible – it just takes some planning.

I’m two months into ownership of our long term Audi Q4 e-tron and while there have been a few teething problems keeping it topped up, it hasn’t left me car-less.

Well, I tell a lie, it almost did.

The closest I got to having a charging scare was over the Christmas period when I was visiting the in-laws.

We arrived with around 80 miles left in the batteries with the plan to plug it in using the three-pin plug cable and leave it overnight to top up while we digested some turkey.

The 305-mile range had been sapped on the long motorway haul from the south coast to the Midlands, and there wasn’t enough left to make the full return trip.

The Q4 charges at a measly 3kw an hour using the three-pin home plug cable, if I’m lucky. At home, I’ve seen it drop to as low as 1kw an hour. But on a good day, it will get a full charge this way in about 30 hours.

That’s what I mean about planning. If you’re going to top the Audi up on this normal household plug cable, you need to have time on your side.

The issue at the in-laws wasn’t time, it was the old building we plugged it into. While all seemed fine when I left it, when I went to load up the Audi for the return journey I realised the draw had tripped the electrics in the garage overnight and had added just 15 miles to the range. I should have checked it, but at home, I’d never had a problem.

This meant we’d be facing an unplanned stop at a rapid charger on the way home. For some reason, this always fills me with dread. For a start, you never know if the one you planned to stop at is working, then you have to contend with the fact others might be using it.

The fear stems from a previous electric car nightmare when I turned up at a service station with 15 miles of range and there were three EVs ahead of me waiting to use one working charger.

When I finally got my turn – more than two hours later – I ended up overstaying my free parking stay at the services and got a £60 ticket.

Anyway, this Boxing Day charge was a lot easier. The BP station we planned to use had two working fast chargers which added 60 miles of range in just 15 minutes. Helpfully, you didn’t need an app to get these started, just tap a contactless card and away it went. The sooner all public chargers are the same, the better.

Frustrating as it was not to get a free tank overnight at the in-laws, the positive experience of using the rapid charger on the road has given me a bit of confidence to do it again.

At home, I usually plug the Q4 in over the weekend and that’s enough time to top the batteries up slowly, which then gives me more than enough range for the week.

I have noticed some strange quirks of the range, though. On one cold morning, I jumped in and noticed for the first time the dash was displaying more than 300 miles of range – despite this being the quoted range by Audi, I rarely see it on the dash after a top-up.

However, after a two-mile trip to a friend’s house I left the car for an hour while we went for a run and when I got back in it had strangely lost 25 miles of range.

Apparently, it’s something to do with the car guessing the sort of journey you’re about to make – but I can’t help thinking many owners will find that weird, bordering on annoying.

Talking of annoying, there’s been a few other irritating incidents with the Q4. One saw the key stop working and the car refuse to let me in. I have no idea why it did it, but after asking a man in Halfords for help (he couldn’t) I went back, tried it again and it worked.

In fact, I think there might be some electrical gremlins at work (and not in a good way) because the multimedia system seems to restart itself every now and then and on one drive flashed up a warning that I needed to get the ‘electrical system checked’. I would have done, had it not been for the fact the warning disappeared when – you guessed it – I turned it on and off again.

Overall, though, I love the Audi. It’s got acres of space which has been put to regular use on my near-weekly trips to the tip (I’m house renovating, not overly wasteful).

The ride is a little hard, but I love its turn of speed, classy looks and the weird noise it makes at low speeds which make me feel like I’m in Tron. Maybe now is the time to finally invest in a home charger to make my EV conversion nearly complete? Baby steps.