The STEALTH Plug-in Hybrid: Audi A3 e-tron Sportback

Rebooting

The batteries do encroach on luggage capacity though, with the boot now only offering up 280-litres compared to the regular A3 Sportback’s 380-litres. Cart the rather large public charging cable and box about with you and luggage capacity gets even more scarce.

The hybrid gubbins adds a bit of weight too. At 1,540kg unladen, it’s 315kg heavier than the regular 1.4TFSI. Some 125kg of that is the drive battery.

Big Audi-family grille is a love it or hate it affair

It’s not cheap either. It’ll set you back £29,950 after the government's OLEV five grand plug-in car rebate: the e-tron is £4,000 more expensive than the 2.0 TDI A3 Sportback, but to be fair, you do get rather more standard kit with the e-tron. Compared to Toyota’s Prius Plug-In (£28,395) and Volvo’s V60 plug-in hybrid (£44,275) the price isn’t too nausea-inducing.

Pop open the cunningly hidden charge socket cover on the snout and plug in and it charge up in four hours from a domestic socket, about two hours fifteen minutes from Audi’s wall charger or a public charge point. The A3 e-tron will get about 31 miles down the road at speeds of up to 81mph using electric power only. Though obviously you can’t go for 31 miles at 81mph. That all-electric range is pretty much class average for a modern plug-in hybrid. In fact, it’s as near as damn it identical to the V60.

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Switch the A3 e-tron from EV to hybrid mode and it shines more strongly. During the course of my test drive, I took the A3 over the same stretch of road in each of its three hybrid modes.

These are Charge (where the petrol engine charges the battery), Hold (the current charge level is held for use later in the journey) and Auto hybrid (which lets the system get on with things). The consumption figures came back as 29.5, 37.5 and 63.5mpg respectively.

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And that’s in a car with a total driveline output of 204ps and 350Nm, that can hit 62mph in 7.6 seconds, push on to 138mph but only puffs out 37g/km of CO2. And it was being driven with gusto along hilly, switchback A and B roads in the wilds of Northumberland. The A3 e-tron is the most fuel efficient hybrid I've ever driven and its consumption figures rather impressed me.