Test Audi Q4 e-tron 45 Sportback: Major Strides!

Update in Zwickau: The Q4 e-tron also received the corporate updates and is supposed to be much more efficient and powerful. We wanted to check that out: And the new 210 kW drive? Always powerful and very efficient, as the corporate colleagues prove: He consumed a neat 15.5 kWh/100 km net, which is just under 17.1 kWh/100 km gross, over the good 800 kilometers of our test! Very fine, but: Since we cannot schedule the test days according to the weather, he had to run at just 6.5 degrees and nasty headwinds, which cost 23.4 kWh/100 km in electricity and shows how susceptible e-cars are to temperatures and topography. But: In the summer of 2021, the predecessor consumed a good 23.7 kWh/100 km in perfect weather, about 1.5 percent more. With the 40% power increase of 60 kW, a lot of progress comes together. The last time something like this happened in Zwickau was in 1990, when the Trabant was switched from the 26-hp two-stroke to the 40-hp four-stroke model!

But it also became drastically more expensive: Instead of 0.41 cents per kilometer, you now pay 0.54 cents! That's an increase of a good 25 percent, why? Because we calculate the kilowatt-hour at 0.45 euros instead of 0.35 euros – the Q4 e-tron can hardly save against the price increase. Then the car itself became noticeably more expensive – if you equip it a bit, you quickly end up over 60,000 euros (especially since the base is still rather spartan) and: The insurance rates also increased significantly: Where you used to pay a good 1,100 euros a year, you now insure it with a good 1,700 euros a year – that's an increase of over 50%!!!