Living with a performance hybrid from the present - 2020 Audi Q5 e quattro plug-in hybrid

Mrs. Javelin has to commute to Portland and back twice a week during rush hour and needs something reliable and also with reasonable gas mileage. Her Audi S4 is supposed to be doing this, but the new clutch has been giving issues, so it's in the shop again. The Cayenne does the trek fine but it gets like 12-15 mpg and well, gas just got really expensive. Clearly our current fleet wasn't cutting it.

Enter new car shopping, which is rough right now. We were researching various options and discovered a really interesting vehicle, the Audi Q5 e. That little e is important as it takes the standard 252 hp 2.0T and adds a 141 hp electric motor to it for 362 net hp and 25 miles of all electric range! It's rated at 65 mpge and does the 1/4 mile in 13.7@104!

We found a just traded in one at the dealer with 11,000 miles on it and it was truly loaded (Audis actually run the gamut from pretty bare so this is important). Premium Plus so it has the crazy LED headlights, 10 speaker Bang & Olufsen stereo, and full digital gauge cluster. This one also has the cold weather package and the driver's assistance package so it has adaptive cruise control and blind spot monitoring. These are important to us and none of the next 25 new ones the dealer had allocated were going to come with those options due to the chip shortage. 

So, we bought it!

All of the other cars are staying, this is an addition to the fleet. Now I can make the Cayenne extra spicy!

I didn't know that this was a thing. Cool!

In reply to STM317 :

I didn't either! Audi didn't build many so it wasn't really advertised. It's got more power and is faster than an SQ5 but it gets the best economy out of everything ICE they make.

Congrats! How far is that commute? It'll be interesting to see on non-commuting days how often you need more range. The electric motor should really fill in the bottom end of that little turbo four, too.

And I expect a full report on those headlights!

Very nice!  And the interior on those are sweet

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Her commute is 59 miles each way. Assuming full charge when she leaves, she should get 25-30 miles of electric on the freeway before the ICE kicks on. Yesterday driving home from the dealership she made it 36.1 miles before the ICE turned on, though it was hilly roads and she was able to regen a lot.

One of her commute days is a drop and dash, so the return trip is all ICE, but the other day has a 2 hour block before return. If she can find a level 2 charger (should be super easy in Portland) it's supposedly 36 minutes from 0 to 100%, so her return trips that day should be half electric as well.

Can it pre-warm/pre-cool the interior off the battery? I'm not sure how the HVAC works on a hybrid like this, I suspect it varies by manufacturer. That's a really nice perk if possible.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

It can! I don't know how to use it yet though or how it works. 

I am going to predict that Mrs. Javelin will very much like that feature.

Javelin said:

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Her commute is 59 miles each way. Assuming full charge when she leaves, she should get 25-30 miles of electric on the freeway before the ICE kicks on. Yesterday driving home from the dealership she made it 36.1 miles before the ICE turned on, though it was hilly roads and she was able to regen a lot.

One of her commute days is a drop and dash, so the return trip is all ICE, but the other day has a 2 hour block before return. If she can find a level 2 charger (should be super easy in Portland) it's supposedly 36 minutes from 0 to 100%, so her return trips that day should be half electric as well.

My strategy for the X3 PHEV when I had an 80 mile daily commute and less than 20 miles of electric range was to have the car preconditioned via a set schedule on shore power, make the drive to work with it set to hold the battery charge at 80% (exact number not really important) so that there was plenty of power available to heat/cool the car prior to getting in it to head home, with the goal to arrive home with an empty battery.

In reply to Karacticus :

That's a good strategy! We have a lot of learning to do with this new car and it's really exciting. 

In reply to Javelin :

There are definitely some things to learn along the way, like how/if you can select the "maintain battery level xx%" mode and how the auto/hybrid drive mode works when applied to the drive home.

For instance, on the X3, it will always start the ICE in auto/hybrid mode at speeds over 70 mph.  I've also learned that once it gets cold enough (generally single digits F) it will always start the ICE.

Again, the primary goal is to arrive home with an empty battery, otherwise you're just using gas to haul around heavy equipment you aren't using.

As a bit of a status update, the X3 just passed 21,000 miles, and just over a third of that travel has been done electric only.

If only the CEL light didn't come on at ICE start when cold soaked and it didn't use a quart of (0W-20) oil every 2,000 miles...

Also, if you need vanity license plate ideas, here's one--

It took about 14 hours to charge from 0% to 100% using a standard 110V home socket. We already have 240V service at the house for the hot tub, I just need to have a socket installed in the garage.

Be sure to check if your electric utility will subsidize the installation of an EVSE. 

What kind of power can the Audi run at?  The X3 is limited to 3.5 kW (~15 A at 240 V), but it's still enough to full charge in 3 hours or less. 

Congrats. Awesome that Mrs. Jav was able to snag a vehicle in this crazy vehicle market.

Apparently the car has a setting for a timer on the charger and it was set to not start until 11PM, for lower electricity rates I guess? (We're flat rate here) So it didn't take 14 hours to charge on 110.

There may also be a setting on the car for how much power to pull from the 120 V charger. 
 

Do be sure to check the temperature of the outlet you are using-- it's not uncommon to burn up an outlet. Pulling a full 15 Amps from an outlet for an extended period is not a terribly common use case for a receptacle. 

If you're going to charge at 15 amps on a 120V circuit, definitely make sure the circuit and outlet are good for 20 amps.  IIRC, a continuous load is anything above 1 or 2 hours.  And a continuous load can't exceed 80% (16A for a 20A circuit, 12A for a 15A circuit).  That's why you can buy an 1800w hair dryer, but space heaters are 1500w (to keep to 80% on a 15A circuit). 

That's still pretty impressive charging.  I only have the 110V trickle charger at home for our Tesla and it only charges at 12A which is about 5 miles an hour.  It would take several days to charge from 0-100 percent. 

In reply to Placemotorsports :

That's partly because your Tesla has about 10x the battery capacity :) You can deal with slower charging on a smaller battery. 

Are we doing this right?

How's Mrs Javelin liking it?

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Great so far! There's definitely a learning curve though. For example, if you use Audi Drive Select to go to Dynamic mode, the ICE is always on. If you put your destination in the NAV, it will use traffic monitoring to maximize your EV usage in traffic situations and arrive at 0% charge. I managed to turn off the charge timer so it charges full time at home. The LED Matrix headlights are BRILLIANT and dim at oncoming drivers, they are really really nice. They also corner with the car.

The charging stations are a bit of a faff. Some are AC, some are DC, some are paid, some are free, some require a phone app. 

We also really need to get 220V set up at home because our 110V is sloooowwww.

Yeah, the non-Tesla charging network is still a bit of a mess. I would think that you can find Level 2 with a J1772 just about anywhere, though. They're pretty standard, and with your battery you don't need to be looking for high speed charging. As long as the 110V can get you a full charge overnight (or during a low-cost period), it's fast enough :)

Tweaking the drivetrain based on traffic is a neat touch. I spent some time stuck in Orlando in a hybrid Fusion and the best part was sitting in stop and go traffic with the AC on but the ICE turned off. Just so much more relaxing.