On the road in an electric car: the clever art of fast charging

Nand everything comes together to form one big picture. Anyone who has followed the development of infotainment and assistance systems in cars in recent years may smile at one or the other innovation. Why should the navigation system know curve radii or height data, after all you don’t want to take off or fly with the vehicle. Not everyone liked the inclusion of speed limits in the map material and the development of the predictive traffic sign assistant, which connects to the cruise control and allows the vehicle to roll out in good time in front of place-name signs.

But now you can see the sense behind these innovations when you drive long distances in a pure electric vehicle for the first time. It’s all about making the best possible use of the available battery capacity and reducing long breaks in charging. To try it all out, we looked at the infotainment in the Audi RS E-Tron GT with the unwieldy name “MMI Navigation plus with MMI Touch”, which comes as standard with the vehicle’s base price of 140,000 euros. Only the head-up display costs an additional 1400 euros, and the indispensable online connection Audi Connect is also always on board.

Even during the first long-distance drive, you immediately discover the differences in the navigation system compared to the software for the combustion engines: after entering the destination, not only does the menu to start the route guidance appear, but also a second one with the option to navigate straight to the next charging station near the destination permit.

If the destination is outside the calculated electric range, the system offers to look for charging stations along the route and plan the stops there. Anyone who now thinks that the battery status and average consumption are simply arithmetically calculated here is completely wrong. You can tell that Audi does things differently by the fact that the range displayed on the speedometer changes when the navigation destination is entered. Namely, topographical route data, traffic data and driving habits are taken into account in order to make the range calculation more realistic.

Audi’s co-pilot then suggests charging stations along the route and prefers HPC stations with a charging capacity of more than 100 kW. HPC stands for High Power Charging. The sat nav shows which calculated remaining capacity you arrive at which charging station and how long it takes to charge there in order to keep the travel time as short as possible. Since the charging station is known as an intermediate destination, the preconditioning of the battery can begin at the right time while the vehicle is still on the move, bringing the battery to the appropriate temperature. Last but not least, the system also shows whether the charging stations are available or occupied. But this only works with HPC stations.

While driving, you can get used to a completely new navigation system message: “The route has been changed based on the current consumption values ​​and the charging plan has been adjusted.” The system therefore detects that you are traveling faster, for example, needs more battery power, and then recalculates . In one case we were taken off the Autobahn via the shorter and slower country road.

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The optimized route calculation works properly in practice, although you can’t set the reserve you want to use to reach your destination. By default, there is around 15 percent remaining capacity, which may be sufficient in a big city with a good infrastructure. But if you end up somewhere in the country and the only, slow AC charging station is occupied by an illegally parked internal combustion engine vehicle, it can be tight.

On long journeys in particular, you have to decide whether you want to be more safety-conscious with the appropriate battery reserves and shorter charging times or whether you want to be sure that everything will work with the charging: i.e. fill up less in a shorter time and rely on the algorithms.

The charging plug does not want to let go

We had problems at two out of six charging stations on a long-distance tour. The strangest thing was that after the charging process was complete, the CCS fast charging connector could no longer be removed from the vehicle socket. We had to call the Allego station’s hotline to have them initiate the activation remotely.

Interesting for tinkerers and load time optimizers is the option to create geo load profiles. GPS coordinates are saved here, for example, that you only want to charge to 80 percent of the capacity at home, and you can also specify a time window.

All in all, Audi has cleverly expanded its navigation with a functionality that takes the fear out of the limited electric range. Anyone who uses the predictive cruise control and pays attention to the foot-off-gas instructions that are displayed moves the RS E-Tron GT with an average of a little less than 30 kWh per 100 kilometers. However, these are mostly economical trips and a maximum range of just over 320 kilometers. If everything is running optimally, you should be able to bring the battery to an 800-volt charging station with 270 kW in just over 20 minutes from 5 to 80 percent. Seen in this light, it can be conveniently driven electrically with the clever route guidance, the online connection and the assistance systems, provided that there are more such super-fast charging stations.

It is also clear that electric driving makes much less sense without active route guidance and online inquiries about the charging stations and their capacities. If you buy an electric car, you need a navigation system, SIM card and dynamic route guidance. In addition to Audi, Mercedes, Porsche and others have also mastered the fine art of flexible routing. Manufacturers who are not yet involved will sooner or later have a problem.