2025 Audi RS E-Tron GT First Drive: A 912-HP Crowbar Between You and a Porsche

With huge power, improved charging and range, and a fancy new suspension, it’ll make you rethink a certain Porsche.
Audi really wants you to know that the 2025 RS E-Tron GT is the “most powerful, fastest-accelerating Audi ever.” It used the phrase numerous times throughout a presentation to us, and why not? The RS E-Tron GT (there also is a less powerful non-RS) packs up to 912 hp, a humongous 275-hp jump from the original 2021–2024 model’s peak and enough to punt this EV to 60 mph in a claimed 2.4 seconds. We achieved an unofficial 2.3-second time running uphill on the main straightaway at Las Vegas’ Speed Vegas circuit, and we can’t wait to see what number we get using our typical testing standards.

What Audi isn’t likely to trumpet as loudly is how the E-Tron GT remains closely related to the Porsche Taycan. The two EVs share a platform, mechanicals, and, with this update for the 2025 model year, a trick active suspension option that combines two-chamber, two-valve air springs with hydraulically managed dampers and clever controls that make traditional anti-roll bars unnecessary.
The RS E-Tron GT so equipped can be driven in what lead engineer Stephan Reil refers to as “helicopter mode,” where the car somewhat unnaturally leans forward onto its front tires while accelerating like Lightning McQueen from Cars, and back on its haunches while stopping, looking for all the world like a mechanized show pony dragging its back legs to stop more quickly. Or, you know, mimicking the motions a helicopter makes to accelerate forward or halt its forward progress. The suspension can also resist body lean in corners, maintaining a supremely flat attitude even through tight, hard turns, and it quickly lifts the body up several inches when passengers enter or exit the otherwise low-slung seats.
More Than Just the Most Powerful, Fastest-Accelerating Audi Ever
But let’s get back to the RS E-Tron GT being—repeat after Audi—the most powerful, fastest-accelerating car ever from the brand. Getting there required a level of mechanical fiddling and hardware replacement that would qualify the 2025 changeover as a full redesign, a new-generation car. In some ways, the E-Tron GT is a new and much-improved car, albeit one that carries over the same body, interior, chassis, and most of its sheetmetal.
What’s new? The nose and tail styling, battery, the rear motor, the active suspension, and even the standard two-chamber, two-valve air suspension that replaces a three-chamber/one-valve situation. Audi also revised the steering ratio and threw enhancements at the RS E-Tron’s front electric motor. As a result, peak horsepower (achieved in Launch Control mode) rises from 637 hp to 912 hp, gross battery capacity leaps from 93.4 kWh to 105 kWh (now 94 kWh net). Maximum DC charging speeds go up by 50 kW to an even speedier 320, and range increases by 29 miles to 278 miles. These changes are, for the most part, shared with the S E-Tron GT, which similarly sees peak power jump by 148 hp to 670—more than last year’s RS E-Tron GT—and range go up by 51 miles to 300.

There are a few caveats to all of the above, of course. Outside of launch control, maximum power is a lower though still healthy 818 hp. You can get 10 seconds of a 94-hp boost via a new push-to-pass button on the left steering wheel spoke, but while that 94-horse improvement takes you to the maximum 912, it’s a different acceleration map than the one in launch control mode.

As nifty as the new power is, the bulk of the E-Tron GT’s improvements are to less sexy day-to-day elements like range and charging speeds, along with the active suspension’s ride quality. Credit the revised battery chemistry, an improved battery cooling circuit, and updated motors, as the 2025 model can hold a higher rate of charge for longer durations while plugged into a DC fast charger, lowering the 10–80 percent charge time to a claimed 18 minutes. It can also dispense its energy more effectively, helping power endurance when you’re experiencing the most powerful, fastest-accelerating Audi ever. As a bonus, the 2025 RS E-Tron GT’s peak regen is up by 110 kW to 400 kW, meaning around town, you’ll recapture more energy than before when slowing to a stop, further helping range.