Kuala Lumpur

AT LAST, I can brag that I’ve driven an electric vehicle (EV) from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore. In fact, I drove 3 of them, all Audis, during a media trip that involved a string of meals between the Four Seasons Hotel off Jalan Ampang and Audi Singapore’s HQ in Kallang, interrupted by driving stints on the North-South Highway. According to Google Maps we covered roughly 380 km; according to my pants, we took in way too many calories.

Lots of people have done long-distance EV travel before. A colleague has driven to the Sepang F1 Circuit in a Jaguar I-Pace (and also drove on the circuit, while he was at it); another took a Porsche Taycan Turbo S through a mountainous route from Munich to Salzburg. 

But Singapore-to-KL is a trip many can relate to, perhaps because so many in-laws seem to live on the other side of the Causeway (and a lengthy drive now and then is one way to have them stay there). Markus Schuster, the managing director of Audi Singapore, said the event was meant to prove that the classic KL road trip isn’t something you still need an Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) machine for. “This is something we wanted to show, that you don’t need an ICE car to leave the country, that you can also drive to KL with an EV,” he said.

He gamely followed the press convoy all the way to KL and back (though he did it in a petrol car). He might be German, but his idea of a decent breakfast is a plate of prata, so he might have had his own reasons for wanting to cross the border. But like just about everyone in the car business these days, he is mindful that EVs are inevitable. Audi will launch its last pure ICE car in 2025, he points out, and it expects to assemble its last engine in 2033. “It’s courageous,” he said. “It costs a lot of money and a lot of commitment, but we think it’s really the way to go.”

To help make his point, Audi Singapore corralled a trio of speedy EVs for the trip: the impossibly sleek e-tron GT, the faster RS e-tron GT and the hefty e-tron S Sportback.

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The first thing to get out of the way is that an ICE car is still the most convenient thing to drive to KL, to say nothing of the destinations beyond the capital: Genting Highlands, Cameron Highlands, Ipoh, Penang and so on. Battery-powered cars simply can’t compete with the ease of refuelling at any filling station and being able to carry on for another 500 km or more in a matter of minutes.

Long journeys in an EV require lots more planning. Will your destination have a place to charge? What’s Plan B if you arrive and the charger is in use or being blocked by a combustion car, or worse, simply kaput? And what if you need a top-up along the way?

That last question is something a different car company is working on. Porsche, a corporate sibling of Audi, announced last year that it is teaming up with Shell to build a network of high-speed chargers that will eventually stretch from here to Bangkok. The fastest are capable of delivering 180 kilowatts, though relatively few electric cars can be charged that quickly at the moment.

We stopped at the High-Performance charger at a Shell station in Tangkak on the south-bound side of the highway, about mid-way between KL and the Tuas checkpoint, to shove some power into the e-tron S Sportback’s battery, because it needed it.

Something this trip revealed is that a powerful EV can feel as effortlessly powerful on an inter-city highway as it does in town. Given the chance to stretch their legs, the Audi e-tron models simply gather speed with no fuss or effort, and keep going until your sense of self preservation tells you to back off. These cars just demolish the miles with a complete absence of any mechanical strain, so you inevitably end up going much faster than you think you’re going, with only a whoosh of air to remind you that you’re busy punching a hole through the atmosphere like an enormous bullet.

The e-tron GT’s low stance and slippery shape certainly make it seem built for 3-figure speeds. It feels utterly stable on the highway, and it never runs short of puff, no matter how high the numbers on the speedometer climb. Its motors can sustain an output of 476 horsepower, so it’s the equal of many bona fide sports cars in terms of raw pace.

The RS e-tron GT does one better, with its motors good for 598 horsepower. It rockets to 100 km/h in as little as 3.3 seconds, but on the highway, it feels noticeably faster than the e-tron GT, accelerating with a greater sense of urgency. It’s as happy to sit at high speeds as a Ferrari is, only in some Ferraris, your ears would be thrashed by the engine noise. The Audi glides over bumps more smoothly than most high-performance cars do, too, despite its air suspension’s sporty settings.

Less successful at being a high-speed cruiser is the e-tron S Sportback, the triple-motor Sport Utility Vehicle of the e-tron family. It’s still a fast car by any measure, but its heavier weight means it gathers speed with noticeably less enthusiasm, and the suspension struggles to keep its body unruffled on the move.

Perhaps more to the point for this media drive, the e-tron Sportback also drew from the battery at a frightening pace. High-speed travel can put a dent in any car’s efficiency, but the e-tron S Sportback used energy at a rate of 35.6 kWh per 100 km — roughly 50 per cent faster than the pace at which the e-tron GTs went through their own store of electrons. That meant it would have emptied its battery in less than 300 km.

Shell’s High-Performance charger came to the rescue. It added more than 2 per cent of charge to the Audi’s battery every minute. Since we had stopped with 45 per cent (and a predicted range of just 127 km), a half-hour break would have been just about enough to top off the car. Shell sells coffee, bubble tea and snacks, so you can top yourself up while your electric car is doing the same.

Other inconveniences are worth pondering, however. To use the high-speed charger at Shell, you have to book it in advance, which is something you can only do up to an hour ahead of time. If you find another car using 1 of the 2 charging cables, your charging speed might be halved because the current has to be shared between the two vehicles.

One way to get around this is to drive something more efficient than an e-tron S Sportback in the first place. Because the e-tron GTs were designed as EVs from the outset — the Sportback was adapted from an existing ICE car — they have a remarkable efficiency that’s inherent. With some disciplined driving, either one could stretch a full battery past 400 km, enough to return from KL without stopping.

That’s a worthwhile takeaway from this drive: if you intend to do long distances in an EV, it’s best to do it in an efficient one, and do it efficiently, even if it means not exploiting the exhilarating performance.

Stopping for a charge is now a possibility, but it remains a second-rate experience compared to refuelling, so it does require a change in mindset that accepts the longer pause as the price for driving a more environmentally-friendly car.

But with more high-speed chargers on the way and batteries improving steadily, this seems like a problem that time and technology will eventually solve. Driving an EV from KL to Singapore will be nothing to brag about then.