Electric Dreams

With electric vehicles making the news, is the Audi e-tron SportBack 50 truly a headlining act? Our writer takes it on a road trip around Singapore to find out. The kicker: on one charge.

- Kevin Chin

“Is that Tony Stark’s car?” asks the wide-eyed lady at the next table while pointing to the car parked beside me. “Not quite,” I tell her before initiating an unnecessarily long lecture on the differences between Iron Man’s car – the Audi e-tron GT as seen in Avengers: Endgame – and my ride for the day, the Audi e-tron Sportback 50.

While the billionaire, philanthropic playboy Stark and I have little in common, our cars share a burning dislike for fossil fuel.

Make a list of buzzwords from the past year, and you’ll probably find EVs (electric vehicles) up there alongside Covid vaccines, umbrage and TikTok. With the government’s push to narrow the “cost differential” between electric and petrol cars by way of tax rebates and an expansion of the charging infrastructure in the coming years, it’s only a matter of time before EVs are commonplace here.

Until that time comes, the question must be asked: what’s it like to spend a day with one?

The brief was simple. Take Audi’s newest eco-warrior for a drive around Singapore, exploring and doing things I normally wouldn’t do. A day in the life of, if you will. And timely, too, considering recent initiatives to encourage locals to rediscover our island with catchy slogans such as “Singapore isn’t boring. You are.” I was determined to prove that somewhat demeaning tagline wrong and to find out if electric cars are worth their weight in batteries. The catch? I had to do it on a single charge.

EAST