I Drove My Audi A3 E-Tron 20,000 Miles In 6 Months, Here's How It Went

When I accidentally purchased a 65,000 mile plug-in hybrid German hatchback with no warranty back in August of last year, I was optimistic—though not entirely convinced—that my ownership experience would be largely positive. After running back and forth across this great nation five times in the last six months, my 2016 Audi A3 E-Tron has proven that it might just be the greatest road tripper/daily driver I've ever owned. Despite the few struggles I had with wrenching on this machine, all due to my own dumb*ss mistakes, it has served dutifully in fuel-sipping fealty. My goal with this car was always to rack up the miles, but I didn't quite expect to add this many of them quite so quickly. I don't think I have ever added 20,000 miles to a car so quickly, but pushing the odometer on this little plug-in hybrid from 65,000 to over 85,000 now has to come with some side effects, right? Everyone always says German cars without warranties are bad ideas, so how has it been? 

Bradley Brownell

With Volkswagen's venerable 1.4T engine and a small electric motor under the hood, this little machine makes a combined 201 horsepower and 243 lb-ft of torque, which is more than enough for me to consider this a warm hatchback. This is the same platform and drivetrain found in the Europe-only Volkswagen GTE, after all. It'll run from 0-60 in 7.6 seconds, which is certainly quick enough for modern traffic. Aside from a few cosmetic modifications and regular oil changes, this car hasn't asked me for anything. So long as I keep it fed with electrons and driven responsibly, it returns either 20-25 miles of full-electric city driving, 50-60 miles per gallon in hybrid mode, or high-30s to low 40s with a totally flat battery. Because I've spent at least two thirds of my drive time on long interstate hauls, it's unfortunately been a lot of the latter. The more city driving I do, the higher the average MPG score it returns, obviously. 

In the time I've owned this car I have purchased two different sets of wheels and tires—one for summer, one for winter—installed lowering springs, swapped the grilles to give the car an S3-style look, popped on a pair of Audi Ur-Quattro door decals, and added a pair of Hella fog lights. I really like how the car looks now, but if I had to do it over, I probably wouldn't have done the Hella fog lights because this move meant I had to cut out too much of the grille to make everything fit and that resulted in a grille that is a little too loose and floppy for my taste. This summer I might take the bumper off again and try again with a new grille. We'll see how I feel about it once the weather warms up. The ECS Tuning lowering springs I installed are just a smidge on the too-stiff side, but the car just looks so much better with an inch and a half taken out of its ride height that I can't complain about it. It's only really bad when I spend three days in a row ripping across the country on I-80 feeling every single one of its expansion joints in my spine. Sometimes beauty comes with a little pain. 

Bradley Brownell

The only flaw I have been able to find in this car across six months of nearly constantly being behind the wheel is the clear coat on the hood (above). I had plans to get it to my paint guy last fall, but ended up needing to run it way more miles than I had planned after our Cayenne pooped out its high pressure fuel pump in October. The three small holes in the car's clear coat have turned into two small holes and one really big one. I'll get this rectified soon, but for now it hasn't been causing any deeper issues, so I let it go for a few months.

As many of you pointed out in the comments of the brake caliper post, the rotors are looking a little worse for wear, so perhaps I'll get them resurfaced in the coming months, but right now it's hardly a drivability issue as they don't squeak or grind and a good bit of the braking is done by energy recovery anyway. Equally, I probably should have installed new shocks and struts when I had the suspension apart, because the rears in particular are getting a bit bouncy. That's to be expected with 85,000 miles on the odometer, I suppose. The only minor annoyance I've found, and this is really picking nits, is that every once in a while if I shift out of park too quickly after hitting the start button, the car kind of has a minor freak out and won't go anywhere, so I have to turn it off and turn it back on. This isn't so much an issue with the car but an issue with my patience. I have learned to wait an additional half second for the computers to boot up before slapping the shifter into reverse, and it hasn't happened since. Unfortunately, that's kind of the whole list. Like I said back in late August when I picked it up, I think I got lucky.

The interior still looks the same, packed with chocolatey goodness, though it's a little on the dirty side right now. The fuel mileage has been pretty great. The car looks good, drives good, and feels good. It's a good car, and well worth every penny of the $11,575 I paid for it.