2022 Audi RS e-tron GT: A racer with a short range. It’s great fun while it lasts.
Audi’s high-end EV shows the kind of power EVs have the potential to unleash, but also the limitations of range and space.
2022 Mercedes EQS580 4Matic Sedan vs. 2022 Audi RS e-tron GT: Battle of the crazy luxurious — and crazy pricey — EVs.
This week: Audi RS e-tron GT
Price: $161,890 as tested. Of that, $20,350 paid for a package that added lots of carbon fiber, ceramic brakes with red calipers, ventilated and massage leather seats and leather dash, and more. The gray paint cost $595.
Conventional wisdom: Car and Driver liked that it was “sporty and confident, sci-fi looks, RS’s spine-mashing acceleration,” but “not enough driving range, narrow cockpit, difficult for rear passengers to enter and exit.”
Marketer’s pitch: “Progress meets power.”
Reality: So much fun you might forget about the range.
Up to speed: Let’s jump right into this because whoo boy, it’s fast. The all-new RS e-tron GT features two synchronous motors with 637 horses that blast to 60 mph in 2.9 seconds, according to Car and Driver, and this is getting close to drag racing territory. I had fun plastering passengers into the seats and squeezing into traffic pretty much whenever I felt like it.
Oh, and while the Mercedes has sounds, the RS e-tron has sounds, and they are delightful even if they’re just fake exhaust noises. Advantage Audi.
Speed limits: The blasts of acceleration will cost you, though. After a couple wild starts, the trip computer dinged me five miles of range, and then the range kept falling faster than expected.
Keeping up with traffic on Delaware Route 1 toward the beaches on a Saturday — anyone who’s driven there knows the average speed — will also suck down the juice.
Drivers can always keep it in Eco mode, but then the dash reports that the car is limited to 85 mph.
Shiftless: The single-speed front transmission and two-speed rear are as smooth as silk.
On the road: The Quattro all-wheel-drive system and adaptive air suspension give the RS handling equal to any supercar, with zero lean on corners and curves. The vehicle is a delight to zig and zag, and a great companion on the highway, as well. Tall road seams and bridge connections can occasionally come through at full force, but so occasionally as to be a complete surprise. I tried different modes and still felt it. Advantage Audi.
Competition: Porsche Taycan, Tesla Model S, Mercedes EQS580.
Driver’s Seat: The seat is covered in Nappa leather and offers ventilation and massage — again thanks to that $20k investment noted above, which I’d say is worth every penny.
Friends and stuff: The rear seat is nice for a low-to-the-ground sport machine, but only in that comparison. Headroom is tight, and leg- and foot room feel like economy class on an airplane, something anyone inside this car may never have experienced.
A hatchback would have been nice here. The cargo space is spare, and Audi is not sharing its dimensions. Advantage Mercedes.
Play some tunes: The Bang & Olufsen 3D sound system provides the same level of delight as it has in all the Audis tested recently. Playback is an A+, with super clear sound that brings out song parts I’d never otherwise know about.
Operation of Audi’s system is something I finally mastered. There’s a round volume control of some sort on the console that always perplexed me enough to just throw up my hands and opt for the steering wheel controls. This time I realized you just draw a circle clockwise to raise the volume, and counterclockwise to lower it. (For you youngsters, well, righty-tighty, lefty-loosey.)
Everything else happens through the giant touchscreen, and it’s awesome. Advantage Audi.
Keeping warm and cool: Controls are up-down toggles underneath a digital display, and everything is easy to follow.
“Hell is other people”: This Sartre quote comes to mind often when I’m behind the wheel, but more when I have a fun vehicle.
The RS sits very low to the ground, low enough that tall pickup truck headlights shine like 1,000 suns. I learned this when one started tailgating me close to home.
I tried restoring my sight by speeding away, but apparently that’s rude. He sure showed me, catching up a mile later, blinding me worse, then passing illegally.
Range: Audi boasts a range of 232 miles and the ability to charge from 10% to 80% in 22.5 minutes.
The RS e-tron GT comes with two, count ‘em two, charging ports, so no elaborate parking plan to match the cord. Still, with 100 extra miles, advantage Mercedes.
Where it’s built: Heilbronn, Germany
How it’s built: The lesser-version e-tron GT gets a predicted reliability of 2 out of 5 from Consumer Reports. A tie.
In the end: It was hard to pry me out of the RS e-tron GT. (There may have been tears.) Plenty of other more practical Audi models also use the e-tron platform, so lots of ways to have fun. Sure, it was never really meant to compete with the EQS580, but I’d still take the Audi any day.
Next week: Where we turn over a new Nissan Leaf.