Audi RS e-Tron GT: REAL World Review | 4K
this is the Audi RS e-tron GT a car I know very well we’ve already brought you a full review from our first drive up in Scotland we’ve compared it head to head against its brother from another mother the Porsche Thai can but this is our new long termer we got this car in because we wanted to find out what it’s like to live with on a day-to-day basis so with that in mind this is our Real World review of the Audi RS e-tron GT [Applause] [Music] okay first things first is Monday morning and I’m in desperate need of a little pick-me-up a little caffeine injection so I’m gonna head to a local Artisan Coffee Spot that I know around here but I thought I’d start the review on some nice normal roads driving around in town do you know what the first thing I’ve noticed is that it makes even mundane Journeys feel quite special you could be commuting in this car and it would feel like almost a privilege which I suppose it should
because it’s quite an expensive car 86 000 pounds for the standard e-tron GT and over 117 000 pounds the RS version when I compared this car to the taikan I noticed that the taikan had noticeably better suspension and driving this in isolation you don’t really notice that it’s not quite as good as the Porsches it’s set up to be slightly softer the air suspension kind of is designed to float along the road and even though the vertical movement isn’t quite as well controlled as in a taikan it’s actually quite a nice ride it feels great just driving around here’s something I don’t talk about regularly in my reviews crash testing it’s not a mandatory thing for manufacturers to test their cars according to Euro end cap testing and Audi actually hasn’t independently tested this car with Euro end cap however Porsche has the taikan that scored 5 out of 5 stars in Euro end cap testing so you can pretty much guarantee that because underneath they’re essentially the same car that the Audi is going to be safe as houses as well reassuring something else I don’t talk about regularly but I will today insurance it’s going to be expensive in this car it’s in group 50 which is the highest possible group I actually looked up last night how much it would cost to ensure me to drive this car and the lowest price I could find was two thousand one hundred pounds but most prices were coming out at around the 3 000 pound mark sure you’re possibly
going to save money on charging the thing but insurance yeah that’s where they sting you the final thing I want to talk about is maneuverability so this car comes with rear wheel steering and that has several benefits and I think the major one is that when you’re driving on narrow roads you can do u-turns and three-point turns really really easily even though it’s not a small car it feels a lot more maneuverable than you might think given its size right let’s go get that coffee I need it after that insurance Price [Music] okay so here we are at the local coffee place coming into a McDonald’s is always kind of tricky especially in a low slung car because they have these quite abrupt curbs that can do a lot of damage to your wheels if you’re not careful but one of the things I really like about this rsh1 GT is the 3D parking system which lets you get a 3D view of everything around you one thing bugs me about this though is
Audi RS e-Tron GT: REAL World Review | 4K
that the car’s black right but the car on the screen is gray and also the wheels are a completely different design to the ones that I’ve got on this actual car anyway let’s get this coffee can I get uh a double cheeseburger and a cappuccino please this is quite nice as well in an electric car you haven’t got the exhaust running so when you wind down the window you don’t get a whiff of your own exhaust as you drive along that’s quite cool lovely good buddy now interior space is not amazing I’ve got two cup holders in here which is great as you’d expect but apart from that it’s not an awful lot you’ve got this weird little compartment at the front which is probably I would suspect let me just confirm that big enough for a double cheeseburger but apart from that the glove box definitely not enormous still it’s a lovely place to sit after my lunch I was fully fueled up which felt like a good opportunity to talk about what the RS e-tron is like in terms of fuel economy even if that fuel is electricity this car has a 93.4 kilowatt hour battery pack of which 85 kilowatt hours is usable driving around town earlier I was averaging about 1.9 miles per kilowatt hour which if you do the maths equates to around 160 miles of range that’s day-to-day driving though how how is the efficiency when you’re driving at higher speeds for example on a Motorway the result is not so impressive 2.5 miles per kilowatt hour is about what you can expect realistically although in perfect conditions without using the aircon you might be able to
push that to three in other words you can expect between 230 and 279 Wells is that enough for a grand tourer well maybe actually because cruising at 60 miles an hour at that kind of range is about four to four and a half hours of traveling which is where you might want to stop for a rest and a refuel anyway [Music] here’s something I really like it gives you this range bubble on the navigation which shows you exactly how far you can drive to give you a visual representation of your range and if you’re driving beyond that the satellite navigation system will actually work out the best charges to stop at and how much energy you’ll have left at the end of your journey quite clever it’s not all perfect in here though for example you don’t get an awful lot of toys I haven’t got massaging seats in a GT you’d expect that there’s also not a ton of stuff going on in the entertainment system there’s the usual stuff like your calendar your weather your messages Etc but apart from that there really isn’t an awful lot of gadgetry going on in this car what is good though is the bang Olufsen sound system that sounds really good so if you like jamming out the tunes on a long journey that is going to serve you pretty well [Music] [Applause] time for another important test how does the car feel when you want to have a little bit of
fun when you drive [Music] on GT has four different driving modes efficiency and comfort which are the kind of defaults when you want to extend the range and just cruise around and then there’s Dynamic and individual which are the two modes you’re likely to engage when you want to have a little bit of fun in Dynamic the first thing you notice is that the responsiveness of the throttle is very much increased so I whack it into Dynamic right now [Music] the steering doesn’t really change it feels the exact same weight as it does in comfort and efficiency but what does change is the ride height on the car the air suspension drops by a couple of millimeters and you can actually feel the car tighten up the body control is much better not just in a corner where it does stay flat but also on the straights you might think that Dynamic mode is quite harsh but actually you could drive in this mode pretty much every day I’ll give you the performance figures because they are quite hilarious 637 horsepower and 830 newton meters of torque how do you reckon it’ll do naught to 62 in 3.3 seconds and 155 miles an hour flat out I know it’s not part of everyday driving but let me just indulge me for a second I’m going to pull in and do a launch control and just see what what happens it’s got an onboard timer Dynamic mode selected launch control active foot on the brake foot on the accelerator head back otherwise you will hurt
yourself and just oh my goodness so two things the car has a two-speed transmission and after a certain point you feel it change gear Believe It or Not gear changing in an electric car the second point I want to make is that this thing will happily do 3.1 3.2 not to 62s all day long and it is it’s pretty painful actually the predominant feeling I have right now is is nausea to be honest the brakes are quite interesting too I’ve opted for the carbon ceramic brakes on this car they cost 5 100 pounds extra but if you’re doing big launches and exploiting the speed of this car they will save your bacon because it’s 2.2 tons this car which means that after a while the brakes will start to fade but with the carbon Ceramics not even a hint of fade really good what’s it like when you’re cornering well I’ve been lucky enough to take this car on a track once or twice and it does throw shape send the traction off and it will get the back end out very eagerly not going to do that today obviously but in the bends the car feels really nicely balanced especially in that Dynamic mode what you notice is that the rear wheel steering system just helps the nose to tuck in more eagerly towards the entry point of a corner you don’t really get any understeer whatsoever it’s a lovely car to drive the balance is very nice [Applause] that’s the lack of noise affect the Driving Experience negatively maybe if you’re old school but the RSC Tron GT does
come with a sound generator so there’s always this futuristic sound coming from the car whenever you accelerate or decelerate which does go some way to improving the experience from an acoustic point of view it’s just a really nice car to drive that’s the bottom line if that’s being really harsh I could say that the Porsche taikan Turbo S accelerates more violently but you don’t need more acceleration than you get in this the steering in the Porsche is also more precise more granular but again this isn’t too far off all round it’s a lovely fun engaging car to drive really like it [Music] [Applause] a very important topic to talk about with any electric car is the charging experience and I think Audi pretty much get it right we found ourselves at a DC rapid charger outside a supermarket I think the first thing to do is actually to see whether it works or not because that’s part of the experience of having an EV isn’t it seeing whether the bloody things work so this should be easy present my card the machine should recognize it this is what I want ccs I get this and the cool thing about the RS e-tron GT is that it’s got two charge ports one on the left and one on the right and the left one is for your DC rapid charger I’ll plug that in uh hop over the cable and is it charging let’s see currently it’s absorbing zero kilowatt hours but hopefully that will change here we go some numbers are happening over here 0.01 kilowatt hours delivered yeah it seems like it’s charging isn’t it now I’m currently at a 120 kilowatt charger this is quite fast but the car itself can accept charge at up to 270 kilowatts which means you could go from 25 miles to 200 miles of range in around 17 minutes most people are going to charge up at home though from a 7.4 kilowatt wall box and that’ll take you around about nine and a half hours now since I am at a supermarket let’s check out the storage in the car so I’ll take you to the boot I believe this is a 405 liter boot which is pretty acceptable some of that space is taken up by quite a large charging cable but on the whole that is a
decent amount of room and if you go around the front there’s even more storage to access it you have to open the door and push the button down there that unlocks it and then you take yourself to the front fiddle around a bit down here and it opens up to give you an extra 85 liters of storage incidentally I mentioned earlier that the sister car of this is the Porsche Titan and look there Porsche logo they’re going to arrest me for pointing that out yeah Porsche logo you get a free Porsche toolkit with your Audi so yeah not bad one thing I forgot to mention was the cost of recharging at this particular recharging Point by shell 79 Pence per kilowatt hour this car has an 85 kilow hour battery so you’re looking at about 70 pounds to fill it up too much of course that isn’t Audi’s fault the solution is just to stay away from extortionate Rapid charges and top up at home where a full recharge will cost you around seven pounds depending on your tariff ultimately then the RS e-tron GT is a very likable car lovely to look at
Great to drive in everyday life efficient enough to take you on a four hour run on the motorway and fast enough to make you feel very ill and or very scared we’ll be seeing more of this car on the channel over the coming weeks and months but let us know what you think of it give us your questions down below and we’ll see you and the each one very soon one more thing guys if you’re thinking about going electric there’s a great event coming up at Blenheim Palace it’s called EV live between the 7th and 9th of July you can talk to experts Drive the latest electric cars engage in Q and A’s with people like me there’s food and music and games bring the children I’ll see you there
