Audi RS e-tron GT: First Drive in Greece

A year after the Porsche Taycan arrived, the Audi RS e-tron GT - which shares the Stuttgart model’s platform and electric powertrain - is also preparing for its market launch.

To get acquainted with it, we travelled to Greece for an exercise that, in the current climate, inevitably evokes fond memories.

A return to an old formula

In the good old days, before Covid-19 arrived, manufacturers would seek out locations that “matched” the positioning of a new model for its dynamic launch.

Today, the criteria are different. Following the cancellation of several “million-pound” launches, German brands have been among the few still offering driving tests to the international press.

These events have generally taken place on German soil, where journalists were welcome provided they had not travelled from areas classified as “high risk” by the German authorities.

For the new RS e-tron GT, however, Audi changed the formula. It gathered a limited number of journalists and flew them by charter from Munich to Rhodes, a Greek island that lies geographically south of Turkey.

This ensured that the new RS e-tron GT could be experienced behind the wheel, as pandemic figures on this small island are little more than negligible.

What we see is (almost) what we will get

Beyond the almost ideal health conditions, Rhodes’ deserted roads at this time of year also helped make it the chosen setting for testing what will become Audi’s most powerful production model ever.

That mattered more than avoiding heavily populated areas with a car that had not yet been unveiled - and which wore a “techno” paint finish here, less concealing than conventional camouflage.

After all, Audi’s head of design had already revealed in Los Angeles two years earlier that the e-tron GT concept unveiled there was 95% final.

“Flush door handles and little else will not make it onto the series-production model,” Marc Lichte told me at the time, on Audi’s stand at the California motor show.

A sign of the times

Even at the risk of being labelled the “Audi Taycan”, the project went ahead, not least because the urgency of having fully electric cars took precedence.

This comes at a time when many brands are “breaking open their piggy banks” to pay the hefty fines incurred for exceeding the European Union’s new emissions targets.

Impressive figures

As Audi’s most powerful production car ever, the RS e-tron GT delivers 646 hp and 830 Nm. Those figures translate into blistering, instantaneous acceleration - as expected of any electric car - with 0 to 100 km/h expected to take around 3.1 seconds.

The e-tron GT, available in standard form and in the RS version driven here, arrives almost a year after Porsche’s first fully electric car, the Taycan, a model that has enjoyed enormous commercial success, with 11,000 units sold in the first nine months of this year.

They use the same J1 platform; the same liquid-cooled 85.9 kWh lithium-ion battery; the same 800V electrical system; the same front and rear electric motors - both permanent-magnet units producing 238 and 455 hp respectively - and the same two-speed gearbox fitted to the rear axle.

Although it has a saloon body - four doors plus a boot - like the Taycan, the e-tron GT visually resembles a five-door fastback.

Its sharper body creases and rounded rear end help create that more dynamic appearance. Compared with the standard e-tron GT, the Audi RS e-tron GT is distinguished by its specific honeycomb grille.

The benefits (and drawbacks) of shared components

The e-tron GT is the first Audi to feature three-chamber air suspension, courtesy of Porsche. Together with rear-wheel steering and rear-axle torque vectoring, this makes for an especially sophisticated chassis, whose tuning will be, alongside the design, one of its key points of differentiation from its Taycan “brother”.

Sibling rivalry is nearly as old as humanity itself; Abel and Cain, or Romulus and Remus, are enough to remind us of that.

Usually, the younger sibling spends much of its early life in the elder’s shadow, until the positions eventually reverse.

Of course, this is something more prosaic than a family relationship - it is a car - but there is still some truth in saying that the Audi RS e-tron GT’s first rival is precisely the model genetically closest to it.

A typically Audi interior

Naturally, most of the 50% of components not shared are found in the bodywork and cabin.

Inside, the angular dashboard, packed with digital displays in typical Audi fashion, adopts a distinctly horizontal layout - somewhere between the arrangement familiar from the e-tron SUV and that seen in the e-tron GT concept.

The RS e-tron GT can carry up to five occupants - four as standard and five optionally - though four is the ideal number. The middle rear passenger has a narrower, higher and much less accommodating seat than the other two, whose feet can sit lower down.

This is because the platform was designed with two “foot garages”, in other words two recesses created around the T-shaped battery.

And despite being a flat platform designed from the outset for electric models, electrical-system components sit beneath a central tunnel in the floor, as they would in cars with combustion engines.

As a result, occupants in the two outer rear seats measuring up to 1.85 m tall should not even disturb their hair during the journey. There are no major differences here compared with the Taycan, which brings the same advantages and disadvantages, including very low, sporty seats that require a degree of gymnastics when getting in and out.

The luggage compartments are also identical in both models. The rear boot holds 460 litres and the front boot 85 litres, which together amount to little more than half the capacity of a five-door Tesla Model S.

Identical foundations, different sensations

With no differences in cylinder count, engine position, forced or natural induction, or gearbox type, how can the desired separation between the two “brothers” be created?

It begins with output and performance. The Audi RS e-tron GT produces 598 hp, rising to 646 hp in overboost mode for a limited period of around 15 seconds - an eternity in electric-car terms, allowing it to travel v-e-r-y quickly.

The Taycan, meanwhile, reaches 680 hp, or even 761 hp in Turbo S form, which is projected to hit 100 km/h in 2.8 seconds and reach 260 km/h, compared with around 3.1 seconds and 250 km/h.

But that alone would not be enough, since these remain acceleration figures firmly in Ferrari - or Porsche - territory.

It was therefore important to give the chassis a softer, more comfortable, more GT-orientated Gran Turismo setup, a task aided by the three-chamber air suspension and variable dampers.

All of this has turned the RS e-tron GT into a car suited both to long-distance touring and to devouring sequences of bends at devilish speeds, with eye-opening effectiveness.

Audi RS e-tron GT dynamics on test

Even in “Dynamic” driving mode, which lowers the RS e-tron GT closer to the tarmac, its lateral body movements are more noticeable than in the Porsche.

In this respect, the Audi RS e-tron GT is also assisted by four-wheel drive and rear-axle torque vectoring, which turn any loss of traction into an opportunity to pull the Audi into the bend first, then out of it as the road opens onto the straight.

Other programmes are better suited to uneven roads, such as many of those on Rhodes, and they are also more appropriate for getting close to the range expected to sit slightly below the 400 km promised by the non-RS version.

Dennis Schmitz, head of e-tron GT dynamics development, is unfazed when I point out that, depending on the driving mode, there is a greater or lesser tendency to run wide in some tighter bends.

His response is: “we wanted it to be like this so that the car could be easily controlled simply by lifting off the accelerator”. That is indeed what happens, with the rear limited-slip differential making a major contribution to the dynamics of a car that disguises its more than 2.3-tonne weight very effectively.

Different driving modes, different gear ratios

Provided a moderate driving mode such as “Efficiency” is selected, where the body lowers by 22 mm to reduce aerodynamic drag and top speed is limited to 140 km/h, the car always sets off in second gear.

In “Dynamic” mode, it pulls away in first, although gear changes are always imperceptible on the road. During the flat-out drag-race-style launch we performed at a semi-abandoned airfield, however, it was possible to feel the transition between ratios.

Under braking, the handover from the recuperation system to the “analogue” brakes is clearly apparent, because “the intention was to keep as much energy as possible in the car”, as Schmitz explains.

In other words, the idea is to coast rather than recover energy and feed it into the 93.4 kWh battery - 85.9 kWh net - even though there are two recuperation levels, both gentler than those in the e-tron SUV.

With its arrival in the UK expected in spring 2021, the Audi e-tron GT should, on average, be £10,000 to £20,000 cheaper than the Porsche Taycan.

This means the entry-level version should be priced at £100,000, while the Audi RS e-tron GT is expected to cost close to £130,000.