2014 Audi A8 L TDI – Review and Road Test – The Green Car Driver –

The 3.0 TDI engine was more than competent but suffered from an all too common malady, that of the turbo-lag and the eight-speed automatic’s delay in passing the 406 pound-feet of torque to the wheels. Selecting sport mode did help in that respect. Fortunately, however, it didn’t exhibit anywhere near the same degree of added throttle lag that I’ve observed in other cars recently.  Overall, the car averaged 28.7 miles per gallon (8.2 l/100km), which is right on the EPA’s target of 28 mpg combined (24 city and 36 on the highway). The on-board computer indicated 34.3 mpg (6.8 l/100 km) in my initial blast from Jacksonville to Saint Simons Island, Georgia, with only moderately aggressive driving on the interstate and a rural highway.

TECH

The A8 has enough in-car technology that even the most jaded driver would stay to let the salesperson explain it all at the time of delivery.

Audi’s Multi Media Interface was introduced in the previous generation A8, which was after the debut BMW’s controversial first-generation iDrive. Mercedes followed soon thereafter with a central knob-based COMAND system, and Lexus later adapted a mouse interface to their touch screens. The A8’s interface uses a central knob, four variable buttons surrounding it, and eight buttons nearby to select function groups such as Media, Radio, Navigation, Car, etc. The navi features uses Google Earth (active data plan required) and its suggested routes were typical of in-car navigation systems, offering you three routes and traffic information with dynamic routing. Also adjustable via the controller is the car’s configuration, including the Audi Drive Select system and the air suspension settings.

While the navi is very pretty, I am not overly fond of it.  Even in the A8, Audi’s latest and greatest, it’s relatively sluggish in terms of responding, especially while inputting a destination and removing letters from the rotary-based input screen.  For most entries, I used the voice control (which is almost as good as Siri – and you can interpret that however you wish). There is a touch-sensitive panel with presets from 1-6 for the radio (I would prefer to have the choice to program any function within MMI, like iDrive allows), and it turns into a compass-rose trackpad used to explore the navigation map.  It also allows you to use your finger to trace letters on it for the purposes of data entry, but I could not make this happen. I found the T-Mobile data connection is very slow in the region I was in, mostly the several hundred mile swath of Florida between Daytona and West Palm Beach, although on the other hand, this is the A8 in which Audi introduced the first in-car LTE hotspot back in 2011, so perhaps it will win me over when it can load at least as fast as I drive.

I liked the in-car tech offerings overall.  I previously professed my love for Bang & Olufsen in-vehicle audio systems in my review of the Mercedes-Benz GL350 BlueTec and this car’s B&O system was its equal. Sound systems such as this make clear  the advantages of high quality music files and give the listener not only a fantastic listening experience but bring out new aspects of music I thought I knew well. The iPod interface uses a proprietary adaptor that isn’t compatible with the iPhone 5, but that still leaves Bluetooth, the 40-gigabyte hard drive, the auxiliary input, two SD-slots, as well as HD Radio, to get high quality audio.

The Active Cruise Control with Stop & Go worked well and very consistently. The controls were reasonably intuitive once you look at the graphic on the stalk, as you can increase the desired speed from 0-95 mph (0-152 km/h) by moving the stalk up and down, and resume by pulling and cancel by pushing. I liked the system, and used it quite a bit on the Interstate and around town, though there were times that it would take a moment to start again from a standstill longer than the people around me in traffic would prefer. The only problem I found relates to the differences of driving in the U.S. versus in Germany, given the lack of lane discipline in the former. Indeed, with the ACC turned off, the ACC light in the instrument cluster flashed red almost constantly when driving in normal traffic, further illustrating my point. I only wish it would warn you before slowing down so you would learn when to pass without braking and re-accelerating. That being said, it’s damn brilliant in Europe.

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