What do you LOVE about your Audi A3 e-tron?

[SirChargesAlot]

Hello fellow A3 e-tron owners!

There are plenty of threads discussing problems, issues and dislikes... which are valid and necessary. I would however love for us to leverage this thread to share the things we love about this fantastic little ride. I'll get us started!

As a first time hybrid owner, I couldn't be happier with the fact that even with little EV only range, I'm able to shave off almost all gas use for most of my daily errands. The mileage per charge isn't much, but in practice, it's quite helpful

I hope at least some of you decide to hop onboard to spread a little positivity.

Let's hear it! What do you ❤️ about your A3 e-tron?

 

[Jacks A3 ET]

Agreed, this is a very nice ride. Bought used at 21400 miles and now just 22000 miles, we have used only 7 gallons of gas. Admit we are retired so around town driving is all we need. But must say, driving this compact and very comfy and good handling A3 makes this $21000 purchase a real value, that fits our needs. And we have no Range worry, as the ICE back up is alway available. And the smooth trasition to ICE is amazing.. Even in Hybred Mode the stop/start is smooth and saves more fuel. Seat comfort and ride quality are great. We love our sporty and efficient e-Tron.

 

[SirChargesAlot]

Agreed, this is a very nice ride. Bought used at 21400 miles and now just 22000 miles, we have used only 7 gallons of gas. Admit we are retired so around town driving is all we need. But must say, driving this compact and very comfy and good handling A3 makes this $21000 purchase a real value, that fits our needs. And we have no Range worry, as the ICE back up is alway available. And the smooth trasition to ICE is amazing.. Even in Hybred Mode the stop/start is smooth and saves more fuel. Seat comfort and ride quality are great. We love our sporty and efficient e-Tron.

Thanks for contributing some positivity! Much appreciated. Sounds like you got a very very good deal for yours! My numbers weren't as strong but I still feel good about the value it gives me for the money.

I agree with you, the way the ICE and EV components work together is like magic. I find it fun to spend time paying attention to the vehicles behavior in different situations, definitely a fun "get to know" car as it presented lots of new bells and whistles for me.

What year and trim did you pickup?

 

[Jacks A3 ET]

Our A3 is Black on Black MY2017. With Plus, Sport & Tech Packages. And we find the audio sound quite good, so do not miss the B & O package. And as we drive it mostly in the city, the two other options ACC & Lane Assit are not important. We do have those features on the other car. That is a Golf Altrack - our lower cost Quattro.
And our purchase was supported by a $4000 US Fed EV Credit.

 

[bruuster]

I bought my 2017 plus with tech pkg and virtual dash in 2019. It was a lease return with 31K miles. I now have only 56K miles. I use mostly around town in EV mode. Sometimes it takes 6 months before I need to fill up with gas. Since the tank is about 10 gallons, I average 200 mpg. My best result was 3,300 miles without a fill up. So the savings of $$ is a positive. I love the B & O stereo. This is one of the quickest and best handling cars I've owned since my "chipped" 2001 Audi A4. (I had an Infinity and a Subaru in between)

It's been pretty reliable. Only a few issues: the EV battery replaced under warranty. (I have a whole post about that). The Nav stopped initializing a few months ago and gets stuck at 11%. But I use CarPlay so not a big deal. And creaking sound going over bumps that seems to come from inside the car rather than the suspension. (not the sunroof)

So, I'm a happy camper

 

[SirChargesAlot]

Our A3 is Black on Black MY2017. With Plus, Sport & Tech Packages. And we find the audio sound quite good, so do not miss the B & O package. And as we drive it mostly in the city, the two other options ACC & Lane Assit are not important. We do have those features on the other car. That is a Golf Altrack - our lower cost Quattro.
And our purchase was supported by a $4000 US Fed EV Credit.

Very nice! I suppose the price difference is a bit more palatable to me I ended up with a Chestnut brown interior Prestige trim which I'm very happy about. I'm glad you're satisfied with it, that's all that matters in the end!

Wow congrats on qualifying for the $4k used EV credit!

I bought my 2017 plus with tech pkg and virtual dash in 2019. It was a lease return with 31K miles. I now have only 56K miles. I use mostly around town in EV mode. Sometimes it takes 6 months before I need to fill up with gas. Since the tank is about 10 gallons, I average 200 mpg. My best result was 3,300 miles without a fill up. So the savings of $$ is a positive. I love the B & O stereo. This is one of the quickest and best handling cars I've owned since my "chipped" 2001 Audi A4. (I had an Infinity and a Subaru in between)

I'm glad to hear you are a happy camper despite a few issues. 3,300 miles on a single tank! Now that's amazing. I gotta say, I love how peaceful everything is when running on EV mode.

I agree with you on the B&O front, I had a B8 S4 with B&O and a B8.5 allroad with it as well, and I would be lying if I didn't admit that it's one of the reasons I stick with Audi. I'm a huge fan of having such fantastic audio without having to go through a massive car audio project, been there and done that enough times.

Agreed! It's very fun to drive. It's familiar for me as I've owned lots of Golf GTIs and R models over the years (holding onto my beloved mk4 r32) and now this bad boy sitting next to it. I'm a happy camper.

I truly hope that my battery qualifies for a replacement before the warranty is out, that would be a very nice end of life reset and could give me lots more local errands. Congrats on getting a new pack for yours! Huge deal!

 

[tmwes]

Bought my 2017 premium plus (sport & tech packages, black with brown interior) used in May of 2020. Had 21K on it, currently have 96K (first 2 years I was commuting 80 miles a day). Aside from standard Audi service and 2 sets of tires, only had one small issue a couple of years ago (a hose deteriorated, needed to be replaced for a few hundred bucks). Still very much enjoying this car. Especially as with my current commute, I barely use gas (plugged in at home and then plugged in at work, 15 miles each way)

 

[icee]

I bought my 2018 prestige used in April of this year. It had 46K miles on it and I've already put a few thousand fun miles on the car. I have in my stable a Mk6 GTI and a Mk7 E-Golf. While the Golfs encourage you to drive more spiritedly and with gusto, the E-tron seems to truely reward a more relaxed drive style. I feel much calmer in the E-tron shleping along in the slow lane at the actual speed limit. I love how quiet the ride is in the Audi.

The adaptive cruise control tuning is much better in the E-tron than the E-golf in that if traffic comes to an abrupt stop, the Audi doesn't stab the brakes right at the end of the stop. It's almost as if the E-tron is "paying better attention" to the speed change of the car in front.

I originally thought that the B&O speakers were not as bright and airy as the Dynaudio speakers in my GTI. That changed when I set the surround effects up in the MMI. With the surround effect off, there isn't much output from the rear tweeters on the rear C-pillars. With it on, music sounds much fuller. Set the surround to max, and the "surround echo" is a bit too much.

I love smaller hatchback cars and the A3 E-tron feels like the perfect progression from my past VW Golf's.

The only issues I've encountered so far is a rear passenger window that activates the pinch protection when rolling the window up in cold weather, a repeatable 1 second squeak when slowing down from anything above 40mph (I'll try to capture it in a video and post it to my other thread) and no sound output from the driver side bass speaker.

I've been reading the threads about the EV battery here and I've been recording in Excel my charge cycles. So far, with 56F mornings and 75F afternoons, I can get around 15 miles of careful pure EV range where 12 of those miles are on the freeway at 65mph. My daily commute is 16.4 miles so the ICE kicks in on the last few residential area miles home. My EnelX box says each charge from a dead battery (no EV icon is lit) to a full charge is around 5.5 to 5.8kWh. While it would be awesome to get an actual 20 miles of EV range or the same 15 miles with AC blasting on full and a some boost acceleration pulls, I don't think Audi will work with me with a warranty claim yet.

 

[kgrkgr02]

2016 Premium, bought in 2017 with 11K after a 1 year lease. Depreciation is awesome for buyers who don't insist on new! Most weekdays have been EV, but many cross-Texas drives since day one. Now at 115K. Long term: 35-36 mpg with hybrid (no charge remaining) and 47mph combining EV and hybrid miles. Has been a great car, just great. However, am now selling it. Just bought (graduated to) a 21 Q5e with only 10K on it. This is one OUTSTANDING vehicle: very fast, very quiet, vault-like on the highway. It, too, had depreciated like crazy, from $65 sticker to my $40 purchase price. I hope that it's reliability holds up as well as my beloved A3e has.

 

[Nuje]

Agreed, this is a very nice ride. Bought used at 21400 miles and now just 22000 miles, we have used only 7 gallons of gas. Admit we are retired so around town driving is all we need. But must say, driving this compact and very comfy and good handling A3 makes this $21000 purchase a real value, that fits our needs. And we have no Range worry, as the ICE back up is alway available. And the smooth trasition to ICE is amazing.. Even in Hybred Mode the stop/start is smooth and saves more fuel. Seat comfort and ride quality are great. We love our sporty and efficient e-Tron.

Yep - pretty much exactly our impressions, appreciation and use case.

Live in a relatively small town, where Costco, "way over on the other side of town" is 6km away. So yeah - gas engine rarely invoked. But at the same time, if we ever wanted to drive to Calgary or wherever from where we are on the west coast....don't have to think twice about it - just get in and drive.

Contrasted with my parents' Kia Soul EV, which they love, but which causes all sorts of additional mental baggage (re-routing, trip alterations, etc.) any time they venture more than 100km from their place.

 

[Nuje]

each charge from a dead battery (no EV icon is lit) to a full charge is around 5.5 to 5.8kWh. While it would be awesome to get an actual 20 miles of EV range or the same 15 miles with AC blasting on full and a some boost acceleration pulls, I don't think Audi will work with me with a warranty claim yet.

Yeah, while the battery lists at ~8kWhr, only 80% is ever fully utilized, so pulling down around 6kWhr from empty....that's a fully functional / operation battery you have there.

 

[5x112]

Ordered my car in 2015, as a 2016 model delivered Jan 2016 new. Now has 110,000 trouble free miles (except the high voltage battery of course - I’m on 3rd one). I am averaging 65mpg over the life of the car, which means the engine has approx 50k on it (although the car doesn’t keep track of engine vs EV mode), since it gets about 32 mpg average in hybrid mode.
I could not be happier with the car, as most of my driving is all electric or mostly electric. I installed sport suspension which lowered it, and I added Miro 18inch wheels, and the result was sports car handling. Sport Hybrid mode gives me tons of power, and I haven’t traded because there is really nothing like it on the market… yet. Cupra/Q3 plug in is coming!

 

[bruuster]

"I am averaging 65mpg over the life of the car, which means the engine has approx 50k on it (although the car doesn’t keep track of engine vs EV mode),"
If you have a virtual dash, there is a screen that shows EV only miles. However, it can be reset so i may not show your actual for the life of car.

 

[dlinkA3]

We are over 300mpg lifetime on our 2017 A3 Sportback e-tron, but only because we no longer drive it long enough distances to have the ICE turn on, except for the rare instances when it chooses to turn on for absolutely no reason. We are still at only 22K miles, using our 2018 Tesla Model 3 for all longer distance trips. Our Audi has been an around town only vehicle for the past 4 years. Unfortunately, the low quality Samsung lithium ion pouch cells are down to 15 miles of range when fully charged, but Audi refuses to replace the pack, even though it meets the California 10 year 150K mile PHEV warranty terms.

We like how our Audi drives, except sticky brakes, but essentially have only a limited use vehicle now, because we refuse to pay for gasoline.

 

[SirChargesAlot]

@dlinkA3 , please stop spreading negativity in this thread.

 

[SirChargesAlot]

Bought my 2017 premium plus (sport & tech packages, black with brown interior) used in May of 2020. Had 21K on it, currently have 96K (first 2 years I was commuting 80 miles a day). Aside from standard Audi service and 2 sets of tires, only had one small issue a couple of years ago (a hose deteriorated, needed to be replaced for a few hundred bucks). Still very much enjoying this car. Especially as with my current commute, I barely use gas (plugged in at home and then plugged in at work, 15 miles each way)

That's so nice to see! I'm happy you've had a smooth ride so far and wow! 100k on the clock that's awesome. I'm hoping I can put 100-150 on this one, I'll gladly drive it until it won't go forward or backwards anymore.

Thanks for sharing your positive experiences with us

 

[SirChargesAlot]

I bought my 2018 prestige used in April of this year. It had 46K miles on it and I've already put a few thousand fun miles on the car. I have in my stable a Mk6 GTI and a Mk7 E-Golf. While the Golfs encourage you to drive more spiritedly and with gusto, the E-tron seems to truely reward a more relaxed drive style. I feel much calmer in the E-tron shleping along in the slow lane at the actual speed limit. I love how quiet the ride is in the Audi.

The adaptive cruise control tuning is much better in the E-tron than the E-golf in that if traffic comes to an abrupt stop, the Audi doesn't stab the brakes right at the end of the stop. It's almost as if the E-tron is "paying better attention" to the speed change of the car in front.

I originally thought that the B&O speakers were not as bright and airy as the Dynaudio speakers in my GTI. That changed when I set the surround effects up in the MMI. With the surround effect off, there isn't much output from the rear tweeters on the rear C-pillars. With it on, music sounds much fuller. Set the surround to max, and the "surround echo" is a bit too much.

I love smaller hatchback cars and the A3 E-tron feels like the perfect progression from my past VW Golf's.

The only issues I've encountered so far is a rear passenger window that activates the pinch protection when rolling the window up in cold weather, a repeatable 1 second squeak when slowing down from anything above 40mph (I'll try to capture it in a video and post it to my other thread) and no sound output from the driver side bass speaker.

I've been reading the threads about the EV battery here and I've been recording in Excel my charge cycles. So far, with 56F mornings and 75F afternoons, I can get around 15 miles of careful pure EV range where 12 of those miles are on the freeway at 65mph. My daily commute is 16.4 miles so the ICE kicks in on the last few residential area miles home. My EnelX box says each charge from a dead battery (no EV icon is lit) to a full charge is around 5.5 to 5.8kWh. While it would be awesome to get an actual 20 miles of EV range or the same 15 miles with AC blasting on full and a some boost acceleration pulls, I don't think Audi will work with me with a warranty claim yet.

Nice stable my friend! I've been a Golf owner pretty much my entire life. I've been through several GTI and R models. I've stored and held onto my MK4 R32 which I believe to be the golf with most character and soul that I've ever come across. You're absolutely right, the A3 e-tron really does reward a chill drive, as long as you keep speeds low, it's very well balanced and actually handles quite well, within it's comfort range.

I like you, am settling in on some but not too much "surround" on the B&O. I agree that more surround can increase brightness and fills the space a bit better, too much of it I find muddies the mids a bit which is actually where I prefer the focus to be. So a bit of surround goes a long way in my ride.

I'm keeping a close eye on my battery as well, but have found that it held up really really well over the years, I have yet to run a EV highway range test, but keeping to backroads in the hills, I'm able to pull off 15 miles of pure EV.

You're not too far from me, perhaps one day we can meet up for some lunch and Golf talk

 

[SirChargesAlot]

2016 Premium, bought in 2017 with 11K after a 1 year lease. Depreciation is awesome for buyers who don't insist on new! Most weekdays have been EV, but many cross-Texas drives since day one. Now at 115K. Long term: 35-36 mpg with hybrid (no charge remaining) and 47mph combining EV and hybrid miles. Has been a great car, just great. However, am now selling it. Just bought (graduated to) a 21 Q5e with only 10K on it. This is one OUTSTANDING vehicle: very fast, very quiet, vault-like on the highway. It, too, had depreciated like crazy, from $65 sticker to my $40 purchase price. I hope that it's reliability holds up as well as my beloved A3e has.

So cool to hear it's not all gloom and doom with this car! So happy to read yet another great success story. I'm definitely onboard with the Q5 hybrid. German lux takes a massive hit after first owner, more so than the econo stuff, being second owner is always a smart move as long as first owner wasn't abusive.

Congrats on the new Q5 enjoy it to the max!

 

[SirChargesAlot]

Yep - pretty much exactly our impressions, appreciation and use case.

Live in a relatively small town, where Costco, "way over on the other side of town" is 6km away. So yeah - gas engine rarely invoked. But at the same time, if we ever wanted to drive to Calgary or wherever from where we are on the west coast....don't have to think twice about it - just get in and drive.

Contrasted with my parents' Kia Soul EV, which they love, but which causes all sorts of additional mental baggage (re-routing, trip alterations, etc.) any time they venture more than 100km from their place.

I just could not get myself to go full EV. The charger leash is short and tight. I agree with you that the hybrid powertrain gives you the best of both worlds, with some added weight, but I think it's well worth it.

Thanks for your input and glad you're enjoying your A3e!

 

[SirChargesAlot]

Ordered my car in 2015, as a 2016 model delivered Jan 2016 new. Now has 110,000 trouble free miles (except the high voltage battery of course - I’m on 3rd one). I am averaging 65mpg over the life of the car, which means the engine has approx 50k on it (although the car doesn’t keep track of engine vs EV mode), since it gets about 32 mpg average in hybrid mode.
I could not be happier with the car, as most of my driving is all electric or mostly electric. I installed sport suspension which lowered it, and I added Miro 18inch wheels, and the result was sports car handling. Sport Hybrid mode gives me tons of power, and I haven’t traded because there is really nothing like it on the market… yet. Cupra/Q3 plug in is coming!

Now that's a good looking A3e! Thanks for sharing.