2025 Audi RS e-tron GT Performance First Drive: Wicked Fast, a Little Cold

Receiving its first update since it launched in 2021, the 2025 Audi e-tron GT model line has been treated to an array of performance, comfort, efficiency, and styling enhancements. The result is an even more competent country-crossing cruise missile—with the battery and charging performance that makes those kinds of trips feasible.

The evolved e-trons still ride on the P1 platform that’s shared with the Porsche Taycan, but everything from power to price point has been pumped for 2025.

Spending time with this evolved, and admittedly remarkable, modern four-door makes us wonder if the technological endgame of grand touring cars is already here, or at least at a point of rapidly diminishing marginal returns. We tested the top-of-the-line RS e-tron GT Performance in and around Las Vegas (including a bit of track action) to find out. With the RS’ sticker starting at $167,000 and the option-box-ticked example we drove coming out to $190,190, expectations were suitably high.

Specs: 2025 Audi RS e-tron GT Performance

Price: $167,000/$190,190 (base/as-tested)
Powertrain: two permanent-magnet synchronous (PSM) 105kWh electric motors
Output: 912 peak horsepower, 738 horsepower base with 10-second boost to 832 horsepower
Layout: four-door five-passenger, all-wheel drive sedan
Weight: 5137 pounds
0–60 mph: 2.4 seconds (manufacturer claimed)
EPA-rated fuel economy: 85 MPGe city, 82 highway, 84 combined 
Competitors: Tesla Model S Plaid, Porsche Taycan Turbo S, Lucid Air

Specifically, our test car was optioned with the RS Performance Design Package (colored seat stitching and Alcantara-like “Dinamica” interior pieces: $1900), the Dynamic Plus Package (active damper control suspension, sticky Pirelli summer tires, and ceramic brakes: $11,000), and the Forged Carbon Package (21” mill-cut wheels, wider tires, forged carbon exterior and interior trim pieces, and a carbon roof panel for $8400), and metallic paint.

On paper, the RS performance spec (Audi is only offering the S e-tron GT and the RS e-tron GT Performance in the U.S. this time around) is a supercar emasculator, with a peak output of 912 hp (available with launch control activated) and a skull-squishing zero-to-60 time of 2.4 seconds. Couple that insane two-motor powertrain with Audi’s new Active Suspension option (more on that later), and it’s hard to leave the driver’s seat unimpressed with the blend of dragster acceleration and luxury-car road manners. That said, all these mind-melting physics tricks ask little—perhaps not enough—from the driver and are achieved without emotion or drama.

More emotional, in our opinion, is the e-tron’s physical presence. This remains among the best-looking sedans you can buy. The updated car’s styling is more aggressive than the outgoing one without veering toward the antisocial. Its low stance, inset cabin, and super-wide track make it imposing in the parking lot, but thanks to a lack of jutting aero and angry-eyes styling, people won’t glance at it and write off the owner as one of those enthusiasts. Sharp lines course throughout the design, but they’re tempered by softer curves and a few delicate features, like the air extractors behind the front wheels.

The e-tron’s muscular haunches remain (the double-widebody effect on the rear fenders is especially sexy), but the visual updates were kept conservative overall: For the 2025 refresh, the e-tron gets a new front and rear fascia, more paint colors, new wheel designs (we really liked the six-twin-spoke 21s on our tester), and the option to spec your big brake calipers (the RS has six-piston clampers over a 410mm rotor up front, and four-piston calipers over a 365mm in the rear) in classic bright red, or a more subtle silver-gray finish.

The most prominent identifiers are the new canard-shaped elements flanking the front cooling ducts (which look great when specced in forged carbon), as well as a new rear diffuser design that leans into the race car look with two prominent chunks of rear aero split by a vertical rear reflector. The forged carbon option also adds slices of the material to the rocker panel areas and mirror caps to balance the visual weight of the front and rear.

Moving inside, the most notable addition to the 2025 e-trons is an option for a clear roof with a range of options for turning it opaque: The panel is invisibly divided into sections that you can individually set to be clear or clouded according to your preference. Glass roofs tend to make for hot cabins, but we’d spring for this option over the carbon roof. In a 5137-pound EV, the choice is less about weight savings up top and more about whether you’d prefer a sporting visual or some cool tech that ups the luxury factor.

In a similar vein, if you check the forged carbon option for those cool exterior pieces, you also get them inside the car. They have a certain appeal, and we get that an RS-branded Audi needs to hew to its high-performance roots, but the interior carbon comes off as a bit boy racer in a car that will likely spend most of its time commuting to and from a corporate car park.

The pair of red (and new-for-2025) steering wheel buttons don’t help in this regard, but we can’t help but love the “Fast and Furious” effect induced by thumbing the dedicated “BOOST” button which unlocks 94 extra horsepower for 10 seconds at a time; Audi calls this a Push-to-Pass system in a bid to infuse more motorsport vibes to the RS e-tron.

That fun red button’s twin on the right side of the wheel is labeled “RS,” and allows for quick switching to the most dynamic RS drive mode, along with two user-configured custom settings: RS1 and RS2. To access the full range of drive modes, there is another button on the center console for further drive-mode customization, while paddle-shifter-like appendages behind the wheel spokes allow the driver to toggle between three settings of energy recuperation upon deceleration. The lightest option makes the car feel like it’s coasting when you get off the accelerator pedal, while the 2025 update now enables up to 400 kW of regen power under the most rigorous setting, which is enough to provide up to 0.45 g of deceleration before the calipers come into the mix for extra stopping power beyond that point.

The driver’s view is dominated by a 12.3” digital dash display with a full-color HUD projected onto the windshield, while the center console has a 10.1” screen with Audi’s in-house infotainment software as well as wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connectivity. Below that screen is a row of HVAC controls mapped to physical—not touch-capacitive—toggles. Unfortunately, the steering wheel retains capacitive buttons on the spokes, and the main volume control on the center console is a bit awkward to use (you spin your finger around a wheel like an old iPod). The standard Bang & Olufsen system sounds fantastic, with a nice central sound stage and plenty of detail and adjustability. There’s not much noise when cruising at 100+ mph, so the system gets to shine at every speed.

Technological doo-dads aside, the RS e-tron GT performance is a great thing to sit in. The driving position was natural and full of leg and headroom for this 6’1” driver. The flat bottom and flat top steering wheel has plenty of telescoping and tilting range, and the 18-way adjustable sport seats (with heating, cooling, and massaging functions) are what you’d hope for in a car with this price tag, if they’re a tad less bolstered than you’d expect out of an RS model.

But what about the performance side of this luxury super-sedan? The powertrain package received the most significant update for the 2025 refresh, thanks to Chief Technical Engineer Stephan Reil and his team. Reil’s first RS car was the B5-generation RS4 Avant introduced in 1999, and he’s done everything from RS7s to R8s in between. In other words, he’s not a stranger to the performance side of the Audi brand and the cars that built it, even if the RS e-tron GT performance is a far cry from the RS2 Avant from the early ‘90s.

Compared to the outgoing RS e-tron GT powertrain, the new one dominates on the spec sheet: It charges faster, holds more juice, puts out more power, and even weighs less.

By the numbers, the old RS had a peak output of 637 hp, which is trounced by the 2025 RS’s 912, resulting in a zero-to-60 time of 2.4 seconds compared to the previous time of 3.1 seconds. The old range was 249 miles on a full charge, whereas the new one can go for 278 (the base e-tron GT will do 300), according to EPA estimates. The old battery capacity was 93.4 kWh compared to the new, denser, 105 kWh-capable package. It also charges faster, with a peak charging power of 320 kW compared to 270 (when using 800-volt DC fast-charging) thanks to improved battery cooling hardware and software. There is now a secondary charging port on the other side of the car that can be used for AC charging, which is much less powerful at 9.6 kW, but still enough for overnight at-home use. Under ideal conditions, 10-80% charging takes just 18 minutes. In addition to the charging and discharging performance increases, the new battery pack also shaves off 25 lbs from the old one.

Watts are sent to the wheels via a pair of electric motors like last time—one at the front, one at the rear—but the rear motor has been redesigned with a smaller rotor that helps the new unit weigh in at 22 fewer pounds than before. The front axle motor has a new pulse inverter, allowing it to match the rear motor’s discharge peak of 600 amps.

All that nerdery results in walloping straight-line performance, but we’ve become spoiled by EV acceleration at this point. The addition of Audi’s new Active Suspension is much more interesting from a daily driving perspective.

The system assigns a hydraulic pump to each corner of the car, which manipulates the compression and rebound behaviors of each damper to effectively eliminate the car’s rolls and pitches. When accelerating, the system dips the nose and raises the rump (and vice versa when braking) to combat lift and dive. On cornering, the pumps work to “lean” the e-tron into corners by raising the outside wheels and tucking the inners to achieve minimal movement for the passengers and flatter-than-natural cornering characteristics.

The hydraulic dampers work in tandem with the two-chamber air springs when Active Suspension is switched on, and it’s a unique feeling to thrash a car on mountain esses without having to constantly brace your body against the rapid changes in pitch that usually come with that kind of pace.

Accompanying this physics-masking tech were capable, if not outstandingly tactile inputs. The RS e-tron GT Performance’s braking was linear, with decent feel despite being a mixture of regenerative and traditional stopping power. Steering effort improved with a new, shortened ratio, and the rack provided just enough feedback to feel like your inputs matter beyond “left” and “right.”

The press drive included some time at the nearby Speed Vegas circuit, and while we didn’t get to hot lap the RS e-tron GT Performance, we were given the chance to A-B test the Active Suspension during some zero-to-whatever-you-dare launches and some tight corner sequences. The verdict? Great from a comfort perspective, but while this RS’ capability is itself an achievement, the thrill that used to come with those two letters has been insulated by its massive amount of tech.

The e-tron GT’s pace, comfort, and isolation beg for a limitless stretch of Autobahn: 120 feels the same as 60, and just poking the right pedal puts you in major moving violation territory. While the e-tron GT hides its weight well and can chase supercars on a backroad, no one would consider it a driver’s car. As with the new BMW M5, numbers appear to have fully usurped passion as the metric for German sport sedan success.

And for those who can afford the nearly $200K price tag of the Audi RS e-tron GT, that might be just fine. It’s got stunning looks, offers performance in line with modern super EVs, and is backed by real RS provenance. For the executive who likes the left lane, it’s a compelling package.

2025 Audi RS e-tron GT Performance

Highs: Gorgeous looks, impressive battery tech, cool suspension tricks, mounds of power, and tons of driving style customizability.

Lows: Very expensive MSRP, cool but limited options, not the rewarding RS Audi driving experience we’ve come to expect.

Takeaway: This is a stylish super sedan that delivers what you ask and expect of it, and, for better or worse, it doesn’t ask much of you.