Audi e-tron GT review

So this is as much a review of the electric performance car generally as an assessment of Audi’s striking new e-tron GT. It was only just over a year ago that I sat opposite Audi Sport boss Oliver Hoffmann in Neckarsulm, Germany, and asked if he could say anything to me that might convince me an EV could be rewarding to drive. He paused for a moment too long, said something about precision and response and added, ‘Just wait until you drive the e-tron GT.’ 

Well now I have. This isn’t Audi’s first all-electric showroom model, but it is the marque’s first electric performance car. It’s not the RS version, though. Instead, it’s the model that’ll outsell the RS four to one. Its two motors generate 469bhp, or 523bhp on 2.5 second overboost, while its 93kWh battery (86kWh net) gives it an official range of 298 miles. With a driver on board it weighs almost 2.4 tonnes. 

Peel away its sculptural, shrink-wrapped bodywork and you will eventually find the same platform that underpins Porsche’s Taycan. This e-tron GT is the equivalent of the Taycan 4S, while the RS variant sits roughly in line with the Taycan Turbo. For now this is the most basic model, starting at £79,900 where it undercuts the Taycan 4S by £3680. However, the car I tested was fitted with the Vorsprung upgrade package, which among other things adds four-wheel steering and air springs, bumping the asking price all the way up to £106,000 while doing so. Given the RS e-tron GT starts at £110,950, wouldn’t you just have one of those instead? Even Audi UK reckons it’ll sell more RS models than Vorsprung-equipped e-tron GTs such as this one.

Like the Porsche the Audi uses an 800-volt electrical architecture, meaning its batteries can be replenished very quickly. In ‘ideal conditions’ and using a very high-speed rapid charger, says Audi, the battery will go from five to 80 per cent charged in 23 minutes. (According to Zap Map, there is one sufficiently potent charge station within 30 miles of where I live in the middle of Bristol.)

I was expecting more from the e-tron GT’s cabin. More opulence, better material quality and a far greater sense that this is a new beginning for Audi. Each of those you’ll find inside a Taycan, whose interior is supreme. The faultless fit and finish, the high-grade materials and the shimmering touchscreens make it feel a world apart from any other Porsche. In its cousin I found glossy piano-black trim, carbon fibre accents and an overwhelming sense of familiarity. This could be any other high-end Audi. 

On reflection, is that necessarily a bad thing? Maybe the A6 owner upgrading to his or her first electric car will be comforted by that impression of normality. Certainly the physical buttons for ventilation and driving modes proved far more intuitive to use on the go than the Taycan’s digitised and pixelated controls. In the back seats, meanwhile, I found fair legroom and a little less headroom than I’d have liked, but enough to be comfortable for a while. 

From Inverness airport with a fully charged battery I set off on the 175-mile route, heading first towards Gairloch on the west coast. In my ears rang a warning: should I drive too spiritedly or venture off-piste once too often, the e-tron GT’s battery may run flat before delivering me back to Inverness. 

Off I went, exercising some caution but determined to give this machine a work out. There was more road noise than I’d been expecting, not the serenity I have felt in a Taycan. But even on optional 21-inch wheels the ride was very good indeed, bumps in the road smothered while the body was kept flat and level. Like the cabin, the way this car steers was familiar too. In short, it steers like an Audi, there being no play in the rack, crisp response and a natural weighting, but nothing like the incisiveness you get from the Porsche’s steering. 

As the landscape rises up around you, the road itself begins to twist and turn, and it moves in a third dimension more and more. It crests, dips, drops and rises, revealing just how low to the ground this car’s centre of gravity is. With very strong mechanical grip and taut body control the e-tron GT doesn’t feel its 2.4 tonnes, at least not until you really start pushing it. When hard on the brakes into a corner you feel that enormous mass making the car squirm beneath you, and when it lands into a compression at speed it does so heavily, at times running out of suspension travel and scraping its belly along the road.

Those two motors, like beer kegs on either axle, make the car feels two-thirds its actual weight under acceleration. The e-tron GT just gets up and goes, hauling itself along with real force. It stops just shy of being physically uncomfortable at full deployment the way the faster Taycans can be, and never did I wish for any more urgency in a straight line. 

The section just after Gairloch is about as tantalising as UK roads get. It is well sighted, it meanders endlessly and its corners are tight enough that you lean hard on the brakes and feel the front axle bite as you turn the wheel. Earlier stretches of the North Coast 500 are so open and so fast that you get nowhere near exercising the chassis. In a conventional car on this stretch, though, you’d be changing down to third or even second gear, then shifting back up as you roar away down the next straight.

Ah yes. Did I miss changing gear? I suppose I did, not least because I involuntarily tweaked the little paddle behind the steering wheel’s left spar once or twice while diving into a bend. Somewhere in my subconscious mind I’d been expecting downshifts. In this car, though, all that does is change the level of regenerative braking. Lunging into a corner without those reassuring bursts of noise and energy from the engine, plus the added stability as the shorter ratios come in, is disconcerting. Perhaps it becomes normal with time. 

I missed a combustion engine soundtrack even less. To be clear, I will always want a V12 supercar to trumpet some stirring, soulful tune, or a V8 super saloon to leave a thunderous cacophony in its wake, but in an electric car I actually like the near silence. I also like that you can unleash 500bhp without alerting everybody in the vicinity to that fact. And so, in the e-tron GT on that road out of Gairloch, it wasn’t the manner of the power delivery that I found limiting. Nor was it a combustion engine and gearbox that I craved in that moment. Instead, I longed for two other things. 

But first, I should make it clear that for a few miles at a time I did quite enjoy driving the e-tron GT. It is agile for its size and weight, plus grippy and quite tautly controlled, and those things mean it can be worth rolling up your sleeves and hustling it along, for there is at least some fun to be had. The trouble is, if you hustle it for too long you’ll see the range readout plummet.

And that brings me to the first of those things I craved while driving this car. With 75 miles showing and 76 between me and the airport (and no opportunity to charge en route), I had to switch out of dynamic mode and into the efficiency setting even before turning off that wonderful road. For several miles I bumbled along, tucked in behind a pickup, mindful that any more speed or any more full-force acceleration might be the difference between me making Inverness and not. 

I realised that day that for the enthusiast driver, there is no greater buzzkill than range anxiety. At least the infrastructure can only improve from here. And just as I longed for better range, I wished also for less weight. Like the Taycan, the e-tron GT hides its heft well, but it’s still there. You feel it when you press the car a little harder through a sequence of bends. It makes you back off again. It seems to me that it isn’t electric motors that cap how enjoyable an EV can be to drive, but the batteries that power them. For now they are too heavy, too slow to replenish and too restrictive in their capacity. Fix that – or better still, fix the charge network as well – and away we all go. 

I do now think that a purpose-built electric sports car, one designed specifically to be rewarding to drive unlike this four-door luxury car, could be a worthwhile driving device. But it will need to be far lighter than this and the network will have to improve sufficiently that you needn’t wind it back in just when you want to dig a little deeper. Ultimately, it boils down to an infrastructure problem. Solve that and the batteries can become smaller, the cars lighter and then, just maybe, they will be great to drive with some enthusiasm.

And the e-tron GT itself? It’s a likeable, capable and deeply impressive machine. Trouble is, I can’t see any one area in which it is profoundly better than the Porsche. The Taycan remains the best car of its type, though I will always be grateful to the e-tron GT for delivering me back to Inverness airport with an entire mile of range to spare. 

Audi e-tron GT

Powertrain: Twin motor, 93kWh battery
Transmission: Two-speed gearbox on rear, 4WD
Power: 523bhp
Torque: 472lb ft
Range: 298 miles
Weight: 2276kg
Power-to-weight: 230bhp/tonne
0-62mph: 4.1 seconds
Top speed: 152mph
Price: £79,900
Ti rating 8/10