2025 Audi RS e-tron GT: Supercar Speed Meets Daily Driver Comfort
I had the chance to drive the new 2025 RS Audi GT e-tron for a few hours in the Nevada desert and for a few minutes on a race track.
Here are my thoughts.
Audi has stepped up its EV game in a big way with its new electric vehicles based on the PPE platform. Over the last year, I drove both the Q6, an electric SUV based on the PPE, and the A6, an electric sedan based on the same platform, and I came out extremely impressed.
I think those vehicles are going to take Audi to the next level when it comes to EVs.
But they are not the EVs pushing Audi’s limits; that’s still its flagship Audi GT e-tron, now with a top-performance RS version launched with the 2025 model-year refresh.
The new GT e-tron, which is built on the same platform as the Porsche Taycan, is more than a model year refresh; it’s a mid-cycle update, but not a normal one. While mid-cycle updates often focus on design changes and adding a few features, the 2025 GT e-tron looks very similar to the previous version, but it’s significantly different under the hood.
The design has been slightly updated with a honeycomb grill, a few new wheel designs, and a very cool new motorsport-inspired rear reflector.
I think that the rear diffuser with vertical reflector looks sick on the RS GT:
It still looks like the same sporty vehicle, but more refined, especially the RS version.
Speaking of the RS version, it’s now the most powerful Audi ever with almost 1,000 horsepower (912hp). That’s thanks to new motors with increased copper density, resulting in more power and lower weight:
An added bonus is that they can also regen at a higher rate of 400kW, which quite impressive. I prefer the regen modes in the Q6/A6, but the 400kW capacity has some incredible stopping power. That’s 0.45G at max deceleration.
It’s useful when you launch the RS GT e-tron from 0 to 60 mph in 2.4 seconds with launch control is engaged. I did a few quick acceleration and fast launches in the desert and on a small racetrack outside of Las Vegas and you need to make sure your head is firmly on the headrest.
Audi also has a “push-to-pass” power boost button on the steering wheel that unleashes an extra 94 hp (70 kW) for 10 seconds. The German automaker emphasized that this is repeatable. I didn’t test that, but I can say that I tested the RS GT e-tron on the racetrack after a dozen people did with the same car, and I was impressed by the capacity at about 50% state-of-charge.
Now, if you look closely at this launch, you might have noticed how the front end of the vehicle adjusted itself down after shooting up from the launch.
That’s thanks to the new advanced adaptive air suspension with with damper control.
It’s extremely fast and impressive. I am pretty sure they could make the car jump and down with the suspension if they wanted to, but they don’t.
The suspension is so advanced you don’t need an anti-roll bar. It adjust so fast that it is able to keep the vehicle solid and balance even in high speed corners. It felt effortless driving somewhat aggressively on the desert roads outside of Las Vegas, but Audi enabled a very cool test on the track.
They had me do a lap without the active suspension’s cornering compensation activated and then I did the same lap with it enabled. It was night and day. In fact, it felt like cheating. I’m no track driver, but the second lap felt incredibly easy, almost as if the car was on rails.
Here are the different suspension profiles:
The new 2025 GT e-tron also has 12% more battery capacity resulting in up to 51 more miles of range depending on the configurations and wheel choices. It results in 278 miles of range mac for the RS and 300 miles of range for the S.
As usual, one of the most impressive things about Audi’s EVs is the fast-charging capacity, and the new 2025 GT improves on that thanks to the updated battery pack:
That results in 10 to 80% charging in about 18 minutes.
All that performance doesn’t come cheap. The S e-tron GT starts at $125,500, and the RS e-tron GT Performance starts at $167,000. The version that I tested with closer to $180,000 with options.
Electrek’s Take
This was actually my first time driving an Audi GT e-tron so I can’t compare it to the previous version, but I came out impressed.
With Audi, I love their quiet, comfortable luxury with the A6 and Q6. This is not that. It’s a performance vehicle, but it’s still a 4-door, 4-seater, with decent space in the back, so Audi clearly also focused on comfort, and you can feel it.
I can see this being a great daily driver even though the cabin wasn’t as quiet as the previously mentioned vehicles and you could feel more vibration.
The Audi GT e-tron really shines when you start driving more aggressively. Like I previously said, the active suspension’s cornering suspension is truly impressive and makes things easier.
Though I’d note that, unlike the active suspension in the latest Taycan, the one in the Audi GT does allow a bit of roll to give you some road feedback. I appreciated that.
I also appreciated the vehicle’s steering. Again, I can’t compare it to previous versions, but the ratio was reportedly reduced and it did feel short and precise.
The lower weight and higher battery capacity are also appreciated as it can be hard for people to buy an electric vehicle at $100,000+ with fewer than 250 miles of range, which was the case before this 2025 update.
Now, to be fair, Audi put me in a fully loaded RS GT e-tron Performance that cost closer to $200,000. It was incredible, but I don’t know how the car performs with the base S GT e-tron. I’m sure you can have fun with it too and you get more range.
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Elon Musk went on an all-day Tesla self-driving propaganda spree ahead of the company’s earnings, which are expected to be rough.
It’s well known these days that Musk doesn’t often comment on Tesla as he is busy with his government work, buying elections, and running several private companies.
Some Tesla shareholders argue that the CEO is neglecting the public company, which saw its stock tumble this year.
That wasn’t the case today.
Musk went on a tweeting spree about Tesla, specifically about Tesla’s self-driving effort.
Here are some of the highlights:
Tesla posted that “one day” its vehicles will drive themselves from the factory to new customers and Musk couldn’t stop himself and had to say that it will happen “this year”:
Like most of Musk’s self-driving comments, this one is hard to take seriously since he said the exact same thing in 2018 and claimed it would happen in 2019.
The tweet he was responding to has been deleted by the author, but it asked when Tesla vehicles would drive themselves to customers:
Spoiler alert: regulators are not the bottleneck here.
Musk then claimed that “Tesla self-driving will be far safer than human driving”:
The problem here is that Musk has claimed on many occasions that Tesla’s FSD is already safer than humans, like in 2023: “Supervised FSD is vastly safer than human driving.”
There’s no data that supports that. Tesla refuses to share any data regarding its self-driving program and instead, the company shares a very misleading quarterly “safety report.”
Considering Tesla’s FSD requires supervision from a driver at all times, the driver’s supervision and attention help reduce accidents that the self-driving system wouldn’t necessarily prevent.
Musk also shared positive experiences of a few Tesla owners, including a Tesla engineer and Joe Rogan:
As we often highlight, Tesla’s FSD can be impressive to use, but the problem is when you compare it to its promise, which is in the name: full self-driving.
Under its current form, FSD is still a level 2 advanced driver assist system, and not self-driving, but Musk said that it would become truly “unsupervised” self-driving every year for the last 8 years.
Therefore, it’s not what Musk has been promising buyers for years and as for when it is coming, he has been consistently wrong and has asked owners to rely on anecdotal experiences as Tesla refuses to release any data.
We previously reported that Musk has twice positively referred to a crowdsourced Tesla FSD dataset that shows Tesla’s FSD v13 on HW4 is achieving fewer than 500 miles between critical disengagements.
Tesla has previously stated that FSD must achieve 700,000 miles between critical disengagements to be safer than humans.
The spree of Tesla FSD tweets comes as Tesla is preparing to report its Q1 2025 earnings next week, which should be difficult after the automaker reported its lowest delivery results in three years.
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Texas is No. 1 in the US for wind and solar capacity, but the Texas Senate just passed a bill that aims to kneecap clean energy with an industry-killing review process. Will the Texas House pass it, too?
The Texas Senate today passed SB 819, which creates new restrictions on the development of wind and solar energy under the guise of “protecting” wildlife. The restrictions don’t apply to any other forms of energy.
Texas uses an extraordinary amount of power, and renewables play a big part in supplying that power. The Texas Tribune reported in March that “ERCOT [the Texas grid] predicts that Texas’ energy demand will nearly double by 2030, with power supply projected to fall short of peak demand in a worst-case scenario beginning in summer 2026.” That’s because of extreme weather, population growth, and crypto-mining facilities.
As of February, Texas increased its energy supply by 35% over the last four years, and 92% of that supply came from solar, wind, and battery storage.
Solar is the largest source of energy generating capacity that has been added to the Texas grid. That’s because it’s cost-effective and it can be deployed quickly. So if new solar projects are kneecapped, power demand will outstrip supply in the Lone Star State.
Daniel Giese, Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA)’s Texas director of state affairs, stated after the Senate’s vote, “With energy demand rising fast, Texas needs every megawatt it can generate to keep the lights on and our economy strong. We cannot afford to turn away from the pro-energy and pro-business policies that made the Lone Star State the energy capital, but that’s exactly what SB 819 does. We urge the Texas House to reject this bill.”
Less clean energy would also jack up electricity bills for Texans, and rural areas would lose billions in landowner revenue and tax payments. Every time a wind farm or solar farm is installed on rural land, it brings a lot of money to the community that surrounds it. A January report estimated that existing and planned solar, wind, and battery storage projects will contribute $20 billion in local tax revenue and $29.5 billion in landowner payments.
What’s especially baffling about this bill is that it flies in the face of a core Texas value – keeping the government out of private property decisions – yet it does precisely the opposite.
Environment Texas executive director Luke Metzger issued the following response: ‘By making it much more difficult to build wind and solar energy in Texas, this bill threatens to increase pollution, increase blackouts and increase our electric bills.
“Under the guise of helping land and wildlife, SB 819 would create a discriminatory and capricious permitting standard that could grind renewable energy development to a halt.
“We urge the House of Representatives to reject this bill and instead support policies that promote a cleaner, more sustainable energy future for all Texans.”
It will come as no surprise to regular readers that I find this bill ludicrously masochistic. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below, and please keep it civil.
Read more: A vast 600 MW Texas solar farm just hit a major milestone [update]
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