More and more traditional car manufacturers are filling out their electric ranges with an expanding range of models and Audi is the latest with the launch of their e-tron GT.
You could be forgiven for thinking the GT is just another handsome Audi fastback – it doesn’t look any different from a conventional car and that’s a deliberate decision by Audi.
In fact, everything about the car suggests that this is just an Audi, but powered by electricity instead of fossil fuels.
It’s a large four door coupé so could be seen as a natural competitor to the similarly sized A7. It’s a very sleek design and it’s properly slippery with a drag coefficient of just 0.24. Unlike the first e-tron, it features conventional door mirrors with no option to specify cameras and screens instead. I never got on with that system so in my view, that’s a good thing.
The interior is classic Audi also, with a nice, low driving position and clear instrumentation provided by the latest virtual cockpit.
In the rear, there’s plenty of legroom and a further refinement is that under the rear seats, there’s no battery, allowing the seats to be lowered so that even with the low roofline, there’s plenty of headroom. A carbon roof is standard, to reduce weight but a fixed panoramic roof is available as an option.
When you start to drive the car, you discover another unique feature. Although plenty of cars, both EV and ICE, have noise generators, Audi takes it to a new level. There are speakers both inside and out and at it’s most extreme setting, the cars sounds like a sporty petrol car. It really adds a dynamic character to the drive. The sound was specially composed to suit the car, so it’s not just a sampled sound. Even when stationary, there’s a burbling idle in the background to remind you you’re driving a car. Incidentally, there’s no talk of self-driving tech – this is a car meant to be driven.
And believe me, it goes like stink. Like many powerful electric cars, there’s instant acceleration whenever you need it and it’s relentless, with drive being electronically apportioned instantly between all four wheels.
The car handles extremely well and there’s plenty of grip in all circumstances. My one issue – and it’s something that afflicts all electric cars – is weight. There’s no getting away from the weight of the battery and even though it’s in the floor where it lowers the centre of gravity, you can always feel it. The days of light, nimble cars are over.
There’s launch control as well, although I didn’t get the chance to test that. Interestingly, the rear motor features a gearbox with a lower ratio which is used for when maximum acceleration from low speeds is called for. I’ve often felt that electric cars could do with something like this but for cruising, so maybe we’ll see that feature appear in future cars.
The figures for the standard GT are impressive enough – 350kW of power, 640Nm of torque and a 0-100km/h time of just 4.1 seconds. If you need even more power though, there’s an RS version in the offing, which produces 440kW for a 0-100km/h time of 3.3 seconds. The claimed range of both variants is in excess of 470km.
The battery, an 86 kWh unit, features fast charging of up to 270 kW and it’s capable of going from 5 to 80% in just over 22 minutes, making the GT a real long distance cruiser, provided there’s a fast charger available but this situation is improving all the time.
Active battery cooling is employed to prevent the battery from overheating either from fast charging or multiple uses of launch control, so battery life shouldn’t be a worry.
Prices for the e-tron GT start from €102,397 and demand is outstripping supply. If will be a few months before the RS version is available and when it does, it will sell from €140,367.
