Gadgetory

in howdy parlance etrog means anything was more than a basic 12 volt battery under the hood could be anything from a full battery electric to a mild hybrid in this case it's right in the middle this is Audi's first electrified car maybe a little car but it's a big deal because this is outies first electrified car they've ever actually sold in the u.s. that from a company that until now has really been leaning hard on getting efficiency through forced induction turbos and superchargers or clean efficient Diesel's but now they've either made an evolution admission or capitulation depending on your point of view into the world of electrified cars not to be sure it's a plug-in hybrid that means it can run extended number of miles on electric but also won't strand you when you can't get to a charge okay quick tour of our a3 Sportback e-tron cabin here's our pop-up screens got that beautiful Google Earth rendering on it courtesy of a 4G LTE connection a very out II thing 4G LTE is standard in these cars navigations not it's weird so if you don't have nav you at least have a hotspot to use your phone to get now in front of the driver you see we're lacking that cool all video virtual that we just saw in the new Audi TT of the same model year here its traditional gauges the one on the left as you see is very electrified vehicle oriented shows charge/discharge usage of the battery there's one gauge and that's a sister with a fuel gauge over on the right your drive controls are a very familiar-looking shifter and gate for the DCT dual clutch transmission no paddles on the wheel though this isn't oriented that way they want you to conserve more than thrash the vehicle now along those lines here's Audi's Drive select we've seen this before to give you different Drive personalities individual dynamic comfort or automatic next to it is a new button it's an e V drive mode on top of those drive modes and that'll take you through the following four electric where it goes battery only hybrid where it blends the two that's the most overall efficient old battery means take the charge of the battery don't use it and charge battery says the battery's down charge it up at all costs so I have it ready later unlike some plugins this one's easy to keep in pure electric mode without really babying the pedal thanks to that easy mode switch we just saw this 1.4 liter turbo joined by electric motor and 8.8 kilowatt-hour battery generate 204 horsepower system 258 pound-feet of torque front wheel drive only on this one no Quattro and as I mentioned 6-speed dual-clutch is your only transmission the 3600 pounds of this little guy gets to 60 in about seven and a half seconds 35 mpg average 83 MPGe if you fully exploit the cars plug-in charge ability and 16 miles of pure evie range / start out he's done a great job of taking out electric car sound a lot electric cars make nasty electric noises this one has them almost completely gone the next thing I noticed though depending on the mode you're in the car has kind of a CVT feel which isn't a great thing if you're used to that nice positive fight of a typical Audi automatic or other transmission manual gearbox you don't really find that here I believe it has to do with some of the juggling of the different power modes from combustion to electric to the other combination of them to the freewheeling it also does to conserve energy it makes it a little spooley sometimes that's it's one of the nicer electric cars you're gonna drive now it feels it's wait I gotta say it's not that light bright possible little out of you might think it is it's got a certain mass to it it's got a certain tub eNOS when it bottoms into a divot into a turn when it comes around it really stresses the side walls of the tires as it goes around a sharp radius corner those battery weight here there's no way around that you do feel quite a difference between the different modes but again I would kind of find the one I like and hopefully not have to worry about the cars battery charged profile beyond that in some the best headline around this car and one I think Audi was shooting for is it's the Audi of electrified cars which is to say it's got the Audi looks proportions beautiful cabin great technology and interface and most but not all of the Audi driving that people love about these cars ok an a3 Sportback e-tron is gonna set you back a little under 39 with destination that's for the base trim level now from that you can knock off about 4200 federal tax credit here in California about another 1,500 credit as of today's shoot but you've got to go all the way to the press key shrimp to get things like navigation bangin Olufsen audio and the more advanced driver assist fully options by the way the a3 e-tron can give you active Lane keeping at 30 miles per hour and above and also partial automatic emergency braking and blind spot warning tech not a driver assist powerhouse but not bad in all I love driving a lot of Audi's I would say I love driving this one the least and but any electrified car today for the most part is a basic calculus of how much do you love it on the right brain and how much of a good value does it pencil out to be long term your left ring more cars driven CNET style standing by now at CNET on cars.com click on the road