2020 Audi E-Tron: Worse than a Tesla? | Everyone's a Critic

Welcome to everyone's a critic. I'm Antuan Goodwin and this is Emme Hall And this is the show where we take a look at the best comments on our content and highlight them here. And we're going to start off with, today we're in the 2020 outtie each. Yes, Audi's new all electric SUV, right? Depending on who you ask. This is either the first or the second or third electric car that Audi's ever built but it's the first that they've ever built with any sort of large production. Yes. Thing. And since we're talking about comments, let's start with audis comments themselves. Electric goes audi. [SOUND] Built for everyday use the fully electric out each one is the right size and the right segment with the right tech in the right ecosystem to go Electric today. One of the big tricks with this vehicle. We'll get to this when we get into the comments but one of the big tricks for this vehicle is its ability to cram a bunch of energy in real fast if you're at the right station, Right if you're at the right station for sure, but how many People. You're right. Okay, let's get to the comments. [UNKNOWN] Nobody care what we think. We wanna hear what you guys think. [LAUGH] There's an issue with each Ryan where teh charger gets stuck. And this is Jermaine [UNKNOWN] Jermaine Crute says Charger gets stuck in the damn Audi SUV that I just paid $54 to charge. Now I'm good. I'll just get a model 3 or a Lexus ES350 Hybrid. Yeah. Tell us about your experience. So, this was plugged in at Roadshow HQ yesterday. And ironically, we do not have any kind of a level two charger. So it's plugged into just a regular household outlet. So I get to the car and I unlock it and I go to the port and I press the little lever on the top and it stuck. And I'm like, okay, well, maybe I gotta unplug it from the wall first. So I unplug it from the wall, and It's still stuck and I'm like, what the hell is going on? And so I'm like, kind of pressing buttons around the port to see if there's something there that I that I'm missing and I can't get anything to work so I text, because Tim is on vacation so I didn't want to like text him to be like hey, what did you do when the thing So I come here and I'm like, there's some kind of emergency port and there is you have to open the hood. And then over here like on the side panel, there's two little like rings one is red. I'm not sure what that one is for and one is yellow and you would like pull on the little yellow tab and it's an emergency release for the port. So. And apparently Tim like lost dad it like went down into the nether regions of the engine and he had it I don't know all kinds of crazy crazy stuff. So yeah, I had to use the emergency thing. I honestly didn't believe it would happen to you. Yeah. Because. It happens in you know, it happened to Tim. And I thought it's definitely a known issue, but there's no way it's gonna strike twice. Yes, it did. And I mean, you should just be able to press a little lover on the top of the port and pull it out, right? That's what you should be able to do. I believe that this is probably something they could fix with software, I don't believe it's a hardware issue. But the fact that we've had this problem twice, but now we're talking about it in two different videos. It's a known issue. I think that's gonna hurt them. And you know and I was so excited when my landlord decided to put in a level two charger because he's got a Chevy Volt bolt. So I was like, isn't me so great. Like, I'm no longer going to complain about how hard it is to use public charging stations and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. My eBay reviews are going to get so much better and now I was just like, Are you kidding me? Well, I mean Are you kidding me? You know, let's give it let's get into this because it's interesting. We had a lot of comments that talk about the fact that it costs you know, Tim so much to charge, the electrify America fast charging station, Right. So here we got a comment from Winnie fit Winnie F-! What an awesome and honest review. I think he's onto something, Version 2.0 will be much better, but they must get 300 miles and definitely solve that charger relief problem. And let's face it $58 for each charge and a long road trip is a No Starter for most of us. And I think that yes, electrify America stations are expensive because they're really they're chugging a lot of energy into the car really quickly. But I also don't believe, I would like to think that I would not if I own this vehicle, not be at electrify America station every day. No, no even me. And the goal is that you'd have a level two charger at home, that you could like plug in every night and you get a lot of your. You're charging at level two, charging stations that are at offices or parking lot for a lot of which are free or only cost a couple of bucks to charge up. And you'd only really use those. I need to get 80% charge Charge in an hour. Sort of charging stations when you're on like a long road trip. Or when you really need the power now but most people don't find themselves in situations where they need 200 miles of range and an hour Except that there still are not level two charging stations and offices. I mean we work for a tech website and we do not have a charging station in our garage. Right, I understand. No, in San Francisco. So, sure, the infrastructure will be there but, like, when? When? That's what- Well, I mean, you know anecdotally, and I understand this is just my personal experience and I live in San Francisco and we have a buttload of chargers around but everywhere I go there are chargers, except at the office. [LAUGH] And how many times have you gone to one of those public chargers and A, someone's parked in there that doesn't belong there. Or b, it doesn't work for whatever reason. Right, I understand that and it happens. It does happen and it when it does happen it's more annoying than at a gas station. But at the same time, the vast majority of my, if I have a vehicle that has 200 miles of range. Inch. And I unplug into my house and I've got 200 miles of range. And I go to the grocery store and there's somebody at all the chargers. So what? I feel like the chargers are a nice to have. Have and if you're buying an electric car you should have a way to charge it at home and that should be the primary way that you charge the car and everything else is nice to have. Whenever I go to like a tesla supercharger station and I feel like a line of models and models just waiting to charge up there, I just think that those people are doing it wrong, like you've bought a car. I understand the energy is free, but it just seems like you're paying for it with your time. Did you see that on Facebook? So you know it's true. There was a long line of Tesla vehicles at the I want to say Kettleman city in California off. I would, I five, but I could be wrong about that over Thanksgiving. Giving weekend because everyone was traveling for Thanksgiving weekend and they had to go to their I agree with you. And I think you know, for a vehicle like this, this is like a 70 $80,000 car. Yeah I mean I wouldn't hope That you'd be a two car household, and that you have some sort of internal combustion engine that you could use for those long road trips. And that going electric for your second car would allow you to reduce your reliance on gasoline. Right, and you only use that use that gas car when you absolutely need it, Right. So you'd have like, You know, this would be your drive around every day car. And then your other car would also be your drive around every day car but now you're not putting gas in two cars a week, and you needed to go on a road trip, then you can use that for something else. Yep, then you have your road trip car. I can get behind that, but as someone who can only afford a single car I can't go electric until these infrastructure problems are solved. So They're real bad for you, son. No, well you can only afford one car too, so- I can't afford one car. [LAUGH] All right, let's get back into the comments, we spent a lot of time about it. I know. This one comes from EDMALUF. Edmaluf. Okay. Now I get that charging at a charging station will be more expensive than charging at home. That's fine. It's a business and they have to make a profit. But the fact that it's a lot more expensive than gas, give me a break. No wonder these electric cars sell a fraction of what Tesla sells. The reason this vehicle sells a fraction of what Tesla sells is Just because it just started filming. [UNKNOWN] [UNKNOWN] [LAUGH] This one's in reference to charging port getting stuck. It's from Mike Lewis, it says it's amazing because if there was a model X, you'd be hearing about it all over the news that the charger wouldn't release and it's after finished charging. You're hearing about it. Yep. We'll talk about it for you. We're gonna tell you about it. It's not that we're hiding it, we've definitely written about it. We've written about it on our site. We've covered it in video we're covering it again here. It's a problem. Yeah. There are fewer of these on the road at the moment. So yeah, we got one from to 89 Pinto. I'll be honest, the picture comment because your name, the grill shape is exactly like a Ford. I hope we're not going to all do the same thing. I hope we are not all going to do this. The same thing. Hyundai or how ever they spell it is the same style. And then talk about that hexagonal sort of grill. That is sort of a look that, in fairness, Audi pioneered. I think the first time I saw a giant hexagon grill like that it was when Audi was doing their big mono grill. Yeah. Big single frame grill and that's something that they've kept Throughout a couple of [UNKNOWN] for the design language. It is interesting, now that the Ford Mustang Mach E. [LAUGH] I love saying that because everybody hates it. But since the Mach Es come out, it's very very similar gross rate. Yeah. And yeah, the newest generations of Hyundais also do. A lot of vehicles are having this sort of Yeah, but I'm just glad that there's an actual grille on this thing, because now that Tesla's gone to having just like a flat face, to me it just, I dunno it looks a little weird, I don't like it. I think the flat face works better on Tesla's design than the open face did. Do you? And it was because the old one used just like a big gloss panel. And so it looked weird. The fact that they don't have that grille It looks better on the Tesla on this. It at least sort of looks like a grill and it does let some air through for things like battery cooling from great cooling and things like that. But for the most part It's pretty It's closed off for aerodynamics Yeah, yeah But I think it's I don't think it's a bad look. I actually liked the vehicle Yeah I like it. Me too. Let's see What else we got You back in the comment Do you have any funny ones? I'm supplying all the funny today. Sorry like it's your job. This one's from Scott and I have it says I would buy one if the range was at least double the 204 miles and charging costs of equal per mile to gas. Until then I'll keep my q five SQ5. Yeah. [CROSSTALK] Well, you know, the, the interesting thing is that again what you're talking about the charging costs equal to slow [CROSSTALK] There's definitely a balance of like if you charge at home overnight off grid, I mean, right off peak, Right.>> You know your cost per mile is super cheap. If you have solar panels at your house if you're you know if you get sort of renewable energy discounts from your your utility even cheaper The cost per mile is already lower but you're just not going to get it. All the time. In ten to 30 minutes and so that's kind of the thing. I think that on some level that is annoying but personally I feel like that level of having the flexibility to just take your car home and go. Feel like stopping at the station today. Go home and plug it in. That is free to me, I think Yeah, and even if you go to electrify America and every once in a while you do have to pay that exorbitant amount of money It's like, I buy director peppers at work for 25 cents a can but then I order the airport and I have to pay $3 and does it suck? Yeah but in the end that $3 with my 25 cents per can. still cheaper than buying it at the store. That was a really good analogy. I said explain that Amy doesn't live in th 1950s, at least our office subsidizes sentences. They shoud be freed, but, you didn't get that from me. They should be freed. Here's an interesting one from dot dot dot, QuietStormX. Looks better than any Tesla that I don't like Great, looks better than any Tesla that I don't like or have any interest in, I'd wait for the camera on the outside mirrors the rest of the world gets for this model. And that's in reference to the fact that we got [UNKNOWN] wing mirrors But in Europe and parts of the world where it's legal you get little screens right here. Yeah. And the sort of like divots in the desk when in the door panels, Have you driven that before. No, I have, Have you? Yeah, it's I mean, not a like I think I did it in a parking lot and Volkswagen couple years ago and it's pretty interesting. I mean, it was pretty easy to train my eyes to just kind of lower just a little bit squirrel to just kind of lower my eyes a little bit and lower my my reference right there. And then I was like, okay, that's kind of cool. Yeah I mean, I don't I don't know how much the aerodynamic benefit is. A lot. Is it? Well, a little. But the aerodynamic benefit is like a couple of kilometers, which makes a couple of miles. There's definitely a little bit quieter, cuz you don't really have to account for wind noise here. But it's a small thing, and I think with EV is it It's one of those things where it's like every mile that you can save. This one's from LD ODOM, all Tesla has to do in order to maintain its majority share I'm assuming with EV is to revoke no cost supercharging or build the cost into the purchase or re-invoke no cost supercharging or build the cost into the purchase price, preferably not as one of their $5,000 options. No cost super charging is not super sustainable for Tesla, I think. No, especially if they start selling like, many, many, many, many, many more cars and then suddenly they're just supplying all of the power for all of those cars for free, that's not scalable. Which is why they didn't do it with the model three, because they want to sell a boatload of those cars. And if you wanna build the infrastructure out, But on some level, you also want to manage demand for that infrastructure going no charge for supercharging for the s and the x was a great move because it got people into those cars. But it also built the situation where people are not dependent on that Or you want them to be, with an electric car the big benefit is decentralizing that power usage. So you can have people charging at home, you can have people charging at the grocery stores, you can have people at their office. It You don't really want that sort of dependence on like these nodes. Yeah, and Tesla is a business and it's out to make money. So there is a tipping point, when you're providing a service like that for free to, like you said, get people into the brand. But at some point, it's not gonna be sustainable anymore and they're not gonna be making any money. And at the end of the day, if Tesla doesn't make any money, then they don't produce any car. And then none of those fanboys Can talk about how it's the best car they've ever driven even though they probably haven't driven one. [LAUGH] This was from Nathan H, Tesla is a far superior of a vehicle of any that I've driven slash ridden in. I bought one after never having spent more than $12,000 on my daily driver. Best purchase I've ever made. My wife hates her 2019 non-Tesla vehicle now. Well, if you've only spent $12,000 on a car then you have course have not driven the cream of the crop you've driven. You know, a Hyundai from 1985. Well, maybe. Driven nicer cars we never bought a nicer car. This is something I know a lot of people are enthusiastic spend a lot of time around cars and that makes them more shrewd buyers. And so you know certified if you can get a good deal. I understand on some level having not spent a bunch of money on a car because I've never owned a car that cost more than five grand. Here's a comment from jimbert50, speaking of being normal. This is in reference to the shifter. Uh-huh. He says, "Push if Forward to go into Reverse and pull it Back to go into drive. That's totally backwards" "from the way it should be. Come on Audi." Laughs. Do you have any issues with this [INAUDIBLE] shifter? No. It's weird, because it looks like you should pull the whole thing and I can do this while she's driving. [LAUGH] It doesn't do anything, it's a handle and there is only like a little thumb lever that you push forward to go in Reverse and you pull back to go into Drive, there's a button for Park It seemed perfectly natural. It seemed really natural to me. I looked at it and I knew immediately how it was supposed to operate. I think it's because when you have like a lever, your prindle It's Park, Reverse Drive, Drive, Drive is always back and then when you wanna go into reverse, you flat the pedal forward. So you're doing a three point turn, you turn, flat forward, back, pull back, drive, but it seems natural. It doesn't bother me. At all. But it is weird, it seems like you should be able to pull the whole thing. But it doesn't bother me. It's interesting because that means that all of this is just a big arm rest. I know, actually, I found that I was actually just driving like this- No, don't do that. With my hand on it. I know, it was really weird. But it feels good, it feels good in my hand. Three and nine all the time. But no, it's we've got this sort of dual touchscreen set up. And the bottom screen is largely for climate controls, but it's also what you use for writing your destinations. So if you wanna go to Taco Bell, you'd write Taco Bell or if you wanted to go to. Taco. It's better. I mean, sure, whatever, they're all garbage. [LAUGH] But that's where you would do your writing. And you don't want your arm bouncing around a lot. And so this makes a good poem rest for like writing while you're driving. Which means that you can keep your hand on the wheel your eye on the road and you can just sort of write without looking. Sorry. Most of us have been writing for our entire lives. Or use these voice commands. I'll tell you the safest way to do it. Yeah, which is a little bit better. This will be our last comment of the day. Okay, and this one- And this one comes from Adrian Nel. It's long and I'm gonna shorten it down. I'm gonna hit just the high points. It says, in theory, EVs should suffer less When the portion of highway driving is more because they can very easily be made far more arid, not aerodynamically efficient than similar size ice ease, because they can have bearings over the wheels because they don't use their brakes as much and they don't need as much cooling. So aerodynamic efficiency should be better on the EVs. Okay. It was a long comment, long paragraph of a comment, where he goes into a lot of information about why he thinks that's so. Okay. And I agree with a lot of what he says here- Sure. But those are two main points. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think that that is if you are taking the Honda clarity approach to shaping your vehicle. Where you put bearings over the wheel. You make your car look like a spaceship. This does not look like a spaceship. Right. This looks like an Audi. And I think that most people don't wanna drive a spaceship. And so You have that sort of like Toyota Prius Nissan LEAF sort of approach to aerodynamics where like everything is just really sort of windswept- Yeah, but- And low coefficient of drag, but I think when people are looking at cars that they actually want to buy, they're looking at things like interior volume. They're looking at headroom, leg room. So you're in a situation where you're still sort of Building around the same size box. Right. All right, so that is all of the good question. Is that [UNKNOWN] Good comments that we have this week. So everyone if you would like your comment feature to here on this show, all you have to do is leave one, it's really simple, but it has to be a good one. No like insults. No just like one awesome, that's stupid. We want some real actual thought put into this. And you can do that on our YouTube channel. You can do it on our site, theroadshow.com, you can do it on our Instagram, on the Twitters, on the Facebooks. We will be checking all of those for your very intelligent comments. [BLANK_AUDIO]