Audi: With the e-tron in the Valais mountains 🎥
SO IS ELECTRIC Customers of Audi Switzerland, prospects and interested parties had the chance to whirr over mountain passes in the all-electric Audi e-tron advanced 55 quattro in Verbier. AutoSprintCH was there. CARLABELLE was on the road with the all-electric Audi e-tron in the Valais mountains. Faced with the impressive Valais mountains, the Audi e-tron [...]
CARLABELLE was on the road with the all-electric Audi e-tron in the Valais mountains.
In view of the impressive mountains in the Valais, I was forced to ask myself an important question in the Audi e-tron advanced 55 quattro, and not just for me: Does the Four Rings even have enough range for such an up-and-down mountain tour? After all, there can't be any charging stations standing around in the almost untouched nature of the mountains...
360-degree camera creates overview
At the start, the display showed 270 kilometers. It was astonishing how much power the electric SUV put onto the gravel. With the 408 hp, accelerating in a straight line was really fun - not that I've ever sat in a rocket before, but I imagine the feeling to be something like this.
At the beginning, the mountain track was harmless, but pretty quickly the paths became narrower and the surface more uneven. While I rarely have trouble estimating the width of a car, it was very helpful that the e-tron had a 360-degree camera. The camera guidance, which can be seen on the display in the center console, works up to 30 km/h.
The fact that you can change the camera view from the bird's eye view, i.e. the view of the Audi, with the touch of a finger means that you know where the car is at all times and whether it might be (too) tight.
Recuperation entirely as desired
However, after a wonderful natural spectacle with a wide variety of weather situations - there was already snow on the Col des Gentianes - there was the biggest surprise when we hit Verbier again in the afternoon: At the top of the mountain, the e-tron indicated that we still had charge for 140 kilometers of range. When we arrived at our starting point, the display showed 180 kilometers of range. That means we had made up 40 kilometers. The solution to the riddle: In the Audi e-tron, recuperation can be set manually, which we had of course taken advantage of before descending from nearly 3000 meters above sea level at the Col des Gentianes to 1400 meters above sea level in Verbier.
No trace of the usual clichés
In my eyes, this experience destroyed some cliché attitudes about electric vehicles that I had before this experience. Driving a car like the e-tron requires thinking and planning. If you are aware of this, you will get surprisingly far.
The price for the Audi e-tron advanced 55 quattro starts at 93,000 francs. This amount is already a bit of a damper for me. But Audi will certainly have a model ready in the near future that fits my budget better.
