We Went on Audi's Efficiency Challenge a Second Time, And Did Even Better

After driving from Singapore to Hat Yai and back three years ago, in an (agonisingly) efficient way, I wasn’t exactly clamouring for another Efficiency Challenge so soon. Because once you understand what it takes to drive a car to sip fuel, you would too.

It looks a little like this: a strict cruising speed of around 70-80 km/h, gentle acceleration always and minimal braking. Preferably with the air-conditioning off and windows up, as the former saps lots of power and the latter allows the best aerodynamics.

You would see massive trucks you’d normally pass freely on the highway start to flash and honk at you for being such a slowpoke, even though you are sitting in the slow lane. And you’d have to control your right foot - and ego - not to do anything about it. All the while sweating your pants off until the seat gets soaked. Yeah, not exactly fun.

But somehow, I signed myself up again for yet another Efficiency Challenge. Gulp.

This time, it’s in the facelifted Audi A3 now with a larger 1.5-litre turbo I4 engine, replacing the former 1.0-litre turbo I3. Hang on a second, is that going to be detrimental to the fuel efficiency? That’s exactly what we’re about to find out.

Let me guess, early start again?

Yep, just about nobody else was up at 4am when we arrived at Shell near Tuas Checkpoint except for a bunch of silly journalists.

Sean from Autoapp, my partner in crime, and I decided early on that it was not going to be a drive where we would suffer for the win. We would turn the air-conditioning on the whole journey, but would calibrate it carefully so that it would be as efficient as possible. So 26 degrees, Eco mode and the lowest fan speed, with internal air circulation turned on. This sounded a lot more palatable than the Hat Yai drive.

Other than that, we just bumped up our tyre pressures to the highest recommended on the label, 37 PSI. Nothing else was changed or modified, unlike our competitors who had dressed their green A3 in masking tape and removed all loose items.

Content that we would drive in a little luxury, comparatively at least, we set off.

Where was your first stop?

Actually, quite far away, at Ong Kee restaurant in Ipoh. We were left to our own devices to sort our breakfast once we departed Singapore. To save time (as we had to reach Ong Kee by a specified time, otherwise penalties apply), we had snacks on the go. I indulged in curry puffs, a Ramly burger and some chips. Obviously, a healthy diet wasn’t part of the equation here.

OK, so what’s your strategy?

Sean and I took turns to drive. I drove the leg departing from Singapore, but handed him the middle portion before I brought us to the destination at Ipoh. Apart from the initiatives mentioned above, we also dabbled with cruise control, turned off the driver assistance system which braked the car whenever it detected another vehicle upfront and played our favourite tunes to keep us awake. I thought The Intercooler podcasts were particularly good.

Is the drive a whole lot more comfortable than the last time?

Yes, and there are a couple of reasons why.

The first is that the bigger engine is smoother and punchier despite remaining within Cat A COE, so the A3 doesn’t feel as strained even at the moderate speeds we were doing. This made proceedings a lot more composed.

The second is that the air-conditioning really helped make things a lot more bearable. In fact, we noticed that the car adopted some fuzzy logic to learn how to make it feel colder than the 26C we set. Until late morning, you would not feel the weather but once the sun was out in full force, the interior started to cook. Even at this time of day, it was still possible to nap soundly in the car (tried and tested).

Lastly, the vastly shorter distance compared to the Hat Yai drive helped tremendously. A jaunt to Ipoh wasn’t unfamiliar territory, and Malaysian roads as a whole are much better than Southern Thailand.

How did you find the car?

There isn’t much we can say from driving a car slow on the highway, but we’ll do our best. It’s a well-built, carefully designed and premium small German hatchback. There’s the typical Audi restraint in its design inside and out, and that’s great. There are physical climate control buttons, a very intuitive MMI screen and good materials all round.

The handling is also great, with a well-tuned steering as well as nippy dimensions to form quite a chukable stance. Comfort and noise levels are just about par for the course, and having no passengers at the back means we don’t really feel the drawbacks of the torsion beam rear suspension.

Maybe one suggestion? It would be quite nice to have more features in this car, like massage and ventilated seats, which would have really been lifesavers on this drive.

Where was the next stop after lunch? Did you get enough rest after the gruelling drive?

Audi is one of the best hosts - if not the best - around. They put us up at the Banjaran Hotsprings Retreat in Ipoh, which was the end of our leg of the Efficiency Challenge. Our team mates, Florence and Jerald, would take the next and final leg from Ipoh to Kuala Lumpur the day after.

Banjaran was simply heavenly. It’s situated right in the middle of Ipoh’s iconic limestone hills, so the scenery is spectacular. There’s natural heated groundwater in the vicinity, so there was an individual hot spring bath in each of our rooms. We also dined in a natual cave. I mean, this is probably the best reward after being behind the wheel for so long.

What efficiency did you get at the end of the drive?

Now pay attention, this is the most important part. On our drive to Hat Yai, we managed 25.5 km/l - something similar to a hybrid. This time, with a larger engine under the hood, we did even better, at 27.4 km/l. That’s pretty impressive, until we found out what our team mates did.

How did they do from Ipoh to KL?

After checking out from Banjaran, we strategised to meet at our next hotel stop at St Regis KL instead of the lunch stop, in order to minimise fuel use in case of being stuck in KL’s notorious traffic.

Using a similar strategy as us, Florence and Jerald were seeing up to 29 km/l, which was a surprisingly good result. Sean and I shouldn’t be calling ourselves seasoned drivers! Our mates knocked the ball out of the park.

In fact, Sean and I were taking too much time getting photos in an idyllic town called Papan, until we realised we had very little time to reach St Regis - a good 2.5 hours away. Luckily we were in the A5 Sedan equipped with a punchy 204 hp 2.0-litre turbo engine, a car built for such situations.

We literally raced down to reach St Regis just in time to fetch Florence and Jerald to our lunch stop, with minutes to spare before we got issued any penalties. Phew. And with that, we are done with the Efficiency Challenge.

What was the final result?

Using manual calculation, our final figure was 26.7 km/l - giving a theoretical range of 1,335 km. That’s simply amazing, and shows in cold hard numbers that the facelifted A3 is simply more efficient than its predecessor, even with a larger engine. That’s no mean feat!

Photos by Audi Singapore and James Wong

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