ChinaBob
Well-known member
Time for an update on the 2015 A3 TDI, with plenty of time to do it. Thanks to the near-blizzard I’m not going anywhere for a couple of days or I’d have hit the 15K mile mark already.
The car continues to run flawlessly except for the some of the functions controlled by the Audi MMI app on my Android smartphone. More on that below.
Now that the weather is cold I’m quite impressed by how quickly the car starts and warms up the interior. The coldest driving so far was the day before the storm when I went out for a couple of local errands. The ambient temperature was in the teens. The TDI started right up and the heated seats (gotta love those heated seats) provided warmth in under a minute and there was warm air coming out of the vents within a block. The whole errand was about a two-mile drive roundtrip. I don’t think I even hit 30 mph and the engine temp gauge never moved off cold but the heat was coming up and already making a noticeable difference. It wasn’t exactly toasty inside but given a bit more time it would have been.
Fuel economy, hand calculated at each fill up, seems to have settled down into the high 30s – low 40s cruising around 75-80 mph. Hopefully it will go up in the summer when the winter blend fuel goes away. And, oh yes, the car’s computer MPG estimates seem to be only very loosely tethered to reality. They can be anywhere from 3 to 6 MPG or more optimistic. The only consistency in the readings is that they are too high; by how much is always bit of a surprise.
The MMI app is another story, but I learned a trick or two in the last 10,000 miles, particularly in regard to internet radio streaming. First I should say that having the WiFi hotspot in the car enables the logical next step in the evolution of audio entertainment, once the bugs get fixed. In contrast to Bluetooth streaming, which is controlled by an app on your smartphone, the A3 can use the MMI to give you a selection of internet radio stations to choose from. That means you don’t have to have an assistant or pull off the road or whatever to change stations, you can do it right through the MMI. When it works.
There are a couple of problems with the MMI app on my Android. The most annoying is that when my phone has already been connected to WiFi, like at home or in a restaurant, it’s reluctant to connect to the internet radio streaming even though it is connected to the Audi WiFi. That is, I can surf the web, or use the Bluetooth streaming, but the MMI streaming says “Not connected” and refuses to function. The workaround is to reboot the phone by powering it down and back up again. An annoying inconvenience to say the least, but at least it works, for me. You can get a huge variety of stations from all over the world (Polish polkas? Straight from Warsaw! Chinese classical? You’ve got it!) but some of them, including any of my Boston favorites, don’t come through well at all. I hate having dead spots every couple of seconds in the middle of my music, and I’m guessing that the MMI app’s buffering isn’t large enough, even though I have it set to maximum. This isn’t a problem when I am driving locally as I just get them on FM radio, but it’s a pain when I’m on the road somewhere out of range. The workaround is to use your favorite radio streaming app and run your station through the Bluetooth. Works fine, but then you’re back to aforementioned Bluetooth limitations.
All in all I am still quite happy with the car, happy enough to be patient while Audi works the bugs out of the MMI app and add some new features that even my Jetta’s Car-Net app had. We’ll see how is goes for the next 10,000 miles.
The car continues to run flawlessly except for the some of the functions controlled by the Audi MMI app on my Android smartphone. More on that below.
Now that the weather is cold I’m quite impressed by how quickly the car starts and warms up the interior. The coldest driving so far was the day before the storm when I went out for a couple of local errands. The ambient temperature was in the teens. The TDI started right up and the heated seats (gotta love those heated seats) provided warmth in under a minute and there was warm air coming out of the vents within a block. The whole errand was about a two-mile drive roundtrip. I don’t think I even hit 30 mph and the engine temp gauge never moved off cold but the heat was coming up and already making a noticeable difference. It wasn’t exactly toasty inside but given a bit more time it would have been.
Fuel economy, hand calculated at each fill up, seems to have settled down into the high 30s – low 40s cruising around 75-80 mph. Hopefully it will go up in the summer when the winter blend fuel goes away. And, oh yes, the car’s computer MPG estimates seem to be only very loosely tethered to reality. They can be anywhere from 3 to 6 MPG or more optimistic. The only consistency in the readings is that they are too high; by how much is always bit of a surprise.
The MMI app is another story, but I learned a trick or two in the last 10,000 miles, particularly in regard to internet radio streaming. First I should say that having the WiFi hotspot in the car enables the logical next step in the evolution of audio entertainment, once the bugs get fixed. In contrast to Bluetooth streaming, which is controlled by an app on your smartphone, the A3 can use the MMI to give you a selection of internet radio stations to choose from. That means you don’t have to have an assistant or pull off the road or whatever to change stations, you can do it right through the MMI. When it works.
There are a couple of problems with the MMI app on my Android. The most annoying is that when my phone has already been connected to WiFi, like at home or in a restaurant, it’s reluctant to connect to the internet radio streaming even though it is connected to the Audi WiFi. That is, I can surf the web, or use the Bluetooth streaming, but the MMI streaming says “Not connected” and refuses to function. The workaround is to reboot the phone by powering it down and back up again. An annoying inconvenience to say the least, but at least it works, for me. You can get a huge variety of stations from all over the world (Polish polkas? Straight from Warsaw! Chinese classical? You’ve got it!) but some of them, including any of my Boston favorites, don’t come through well at all. I hate having dead spots every couple of seconds in the middle of my music, and I’m guessing that the MMI app’s buffering isn’t large enough, even though I have it set to maximum. This isn’t a problem when I am driving locally as I just get them on FM radio, but it’s a pain when I’m on the road somewhere out of range. The workaround is to use your favorite radio streaming app and run your station through the Bluetooth. Works fine, but then you’re back to aforementioned Bluetooth limitations.
All in all I am still quite happy with the car, happy enough to be patient while Audi works the bugs out of the MMI app and add some new features that even my Jetta’s Car-Net app had. We’ll see how is goes for the next 10,000 miles.