Audi RS e-tron GT Review | The end of performance cars? (4K)
this is the audi rs e-tron gt it’s the flagship for audi’s vast electric vehicle plans that dominate the company’s lineup for the foreseeable future much like the porsche taikan on which it shares a platform the e-tron gt is a halo model designed to steal your attention and boost the company’s ev street cred but here’s the thing i reckon that this car this 116 000 pound rocket ship could be the perfect example of why the performance car might not make it through the next generation of the motor car and here’s why for starters this car is
ballistically quick in regular rs spec it’s got 590 brake horsepower but when you put it in boost mode that increases to 637 brake horsepower which makes for some pretty formidable launching abilities all you got to do is come to a halt check it’s clear put the car into dynamic mode like so left foot on the brake right foot on the accelerator and lift off it really is ballistically fast it does not 62 miles an hour in 3.3 seconds in a 2.3 ton gt car and that’s enough speed to cause owners of even the fastest supercars
a proper headache at the traffic light grand prix it’s a missile part of this is down to audi’s legendary quattro all-wheel drive system but the two-speed transmission
that pretty much all evs are well quick the real world difference between this and a regular e-tron gt it isn’t as obvious as you might expect and you certainly can’t say that for the difference between a two-liter petrol a6 and an audi rs6 you will definitely notice the difference there and also not to 62 miles an hour in less than five seconds used to be incredible it was heroic now it’s the bare minimum in a luxury ev it has to do that it goes further than this too for example the project director for bmw’s ix
m60 recently alluded to how much harder it is to differentiate m division evs from their petrol equivalents partly because straight line speed is less of a factor in reality it means that you end up with a model range that’s rapid across the board and identified by other less significant features i recently went on the launch for the bmw ix m60 which is their flagship suv evm car and some of the ways that they said they were going to differentiate it from regular ixes was the startup sound the shutdown sound and the graphical displays and that’s
on an m car it sounds ridiculous but when you take a performance car’s speed away as a unique selling point then how else do you make them stand out handling that’s a great way to do it performance cars shouldn’t just be quick in a straight line they also need to be rapid in the corners and to help it do that the rs etron gt has got a perfect 50 50 weight distribution it’s got a self-locking center diff it’s got three chamber air suspension all round and rear wheel steering and the result of all of that
is that this car isn’t as fun or as engaging to drive as a porsche thai car there’s not as much communication through the steering you don’t feel what’s going on as much and also it feels to me like it’s more front limited there’s not as much rotation going into a corner as you can get from a tie con and also coming out you can put your foot down and just push the back end round in this it hasn’t got that it just feels safer now of course this doesn’t sound too promising but in fairness audi
didn’t set out to make a clone of the tycon they wanted it to have its own feel and character less sports car more gt cruiser that can waft from one motorway charging station to the next with impunity that means that it’s comfier and more relaxing than the tycon and that’s to be expected but the interesting thing is that i reckon this powertrain this platform is better suited to how this car drives than it is with the taikan and the reason for that i reckon is down to good old-fashioned physics you see in its heaviest form
the thai khan like the e-tron gt weighs 2.4 tonnes considering this it drives brilliantly but regardless of what the marketing material may say the additional weight means that it won’t be as agile or as exciting as a car that weighs several hundred kilos less driving the e-tron gt it feels like this was accepted very early on in the design process why try and create a sports car when you’ve already got a ready-made luxury gt that’s just waiting to be realized so instead of going for outright handling sparkle audi has taken things back a notch and
focused more on aspects that don’t care for a low curb weight that means that with its comfier ride and more relaxed persona the e-tron gt plays on the inherent strengths of the ev and uses them to deliver a car that feels almost perfectly resolved even more so actually in non-rs spec don’t get me wrong this isn’t about who makes the better car there’s very good arguments to spend your money on either but considering that it’s currently harder to make an electric sports car than it is an electric luxury car then you really need the customers
to buy into the former to make it viable but you know i don’t even think that that’s a given anymore because if your average luxury car buyer was that fast on how a car handles and how it feels then why are big heavy suvs selling better than they ever have of course things will change the batteries will get lighter technology will improve but by that point i worry that it’ll be too late people will become so used to comfortable fast silent tvs that anything sporty will seem uncouth almost obsolete this is an audi rs model
that isn’t entirely focused on performance and in this instance it’s all the better for it you
