Audi Sport has gone electric, and the new 2.3-tonne RS5 plug-in hybrid has to prove it still deserves the RS badge.
Back in 1965, Bob Dylan walked out at the Newport Folk Festival, plugged in an electric guitar and (depending on who you ask) got booed by a crowd of folk purists who felt properly betrayed. Sixty-odd years on, Audi has borrowed the moment for its latest ad campaign: Dylan plugs in, and that shot of electricity sends his music career into the stratosphere. Just quietly, I think it’s a pretty clever pitch, because Audi Sport has just gone electric too, and the purists are already sharpening their pencils.
Ever since the 1994 RS2, the RS badge has meant something to Audi-ites, but evidently it means even more to us Kiwis, with New Zealand being number one for Audi Sport sales per capita (yes, really). That makes the new Audi RS5 a big deal. It now effectively takes on the roles of the RS4, RS5 and RS6, so it carries a lot of weight on its shoulders, as well as a lot of actual weight at around 2.3 tonnes. Which raises the question: is a 2.3-tonne plug-in hybrid fit to wear the RS badge? Audi New Zealand initially let us find out at the NZ launch on the racetrack in both sedan and Avant forms, and now with the RS5 PHEV Sedan as our test car.
Let’s start with the paint, because our test car came in Bedford Green and it’s just a beautiful colour. Pair that with the 21in Neodymium Gold wheels (wrapped in Pirelli P Zeros) and the contrast is brilliant. Up front sits a three-dimensional four-ring badge, and then (optional) camo carbon is dotted around the inlets, down the sides, on the mirror caps and along the door sills. The front and rear lights can be personalised too, with eight lighting configurations including a chequered flag design, which is very cool and well worth seeing in person. Behind those big wheels you’ll spot the optional carbon ceramic brakes, another really cool touch, but also ideal for those that REALLY want to stop.
At almost 5m long and only 1.4m tall, it’s low enough to look over the top of, and in a world full of SUVs that’s a great thing. Along the profile, the sloping roofline gives it a fastback look (even though it’s a sedan), and all finished off with a carbon boot spoiler and carbon rear bumper accents. Speaking of the rear, the massive exhaust outlets are not fake by any stretch of the imagination, unlike the front vents (but let’s not go there).
Open the boot and you’ll find 331L of space, which shows off that fastback shape. Here I have a bone to pick with Audi, though. This is the sedan (the spec sheet even calls it a “limousine”), yet when you open the boot the rear glass lifts with the lid, which isn’t normally a sedan trait. Maybe it’s a little confused about its identity?
Under the bonnet sits a 2.9L turbocharged V6, joined by a 22kWh battery and an electric motor, and yes, all of that adds weight, so you do have to wonder whether it’s too much for an RS5. But together they produce 470kW/825Nm, which is substantial, and get you from zero to 100km/h in 3.6s. That’s not ‘almost’ supercar quick. It is supercar quick.
Inside, the RS treatment seems to have been applied to everything: RS door sills, floor mats, seatbelts, seats, steering wheel and an RS-specific display. It’s an overload of Audi Sport, but can you really have too much when it’s all this nicely done? The floor mats get beautiful contrast stitching and an embossed RS logo, and the seatbelts match the Bedford Green paint. They’re mostly options, but when you’re specifying a car like this you’d be mad not to tick a few boxes, because they make the experience so much better. The RS seats have a honeycomb pattern, contrast stitching and strong bolsters, and sitting back in them puts you in a focused, racy position that makes you want a heavier right foot (as you should in an Audi Sport car).
Dinamica microfibre is used generously across the dashboard, steering wheel and door panels, and it frames the seats too. It looks great on a brand-new car, but I do wonder how it will age, especially on the steering wheel, which you’re touching all the time with sweaty hands. The camo forged carbon from outside carries on inside, framing the gloss black centre console.
The low height gives you a boxed-in feeling, but in a good way, like being in a race car, and even in a car this low you still get a glass panoramic roof with six options for making patterns and shading parts of it. Quite intelligent. So is the Bang & Olufsen 3D audio system, which is phenomenal, as it always is in these Audis.
The screens add to that racing-driver feeling, with all the information up close and surrounding you. There are three of them: the Audi Virtual Cockpit cluster, the infotainment screen and a third for the passenger, plus a massive head-up display. The infotainment home layout is nicely compartmentalised, with a shortcut bar on the right, maps and an Android Auto view, while the permanent climate controls along the bottom have large icons and a panel to rest your finger on while you toggle, which is really helpful (although again in piano black, so the some ageing questions may apply).
Head into the car menu and Audi Drive Select offers Comfort, Balanced and Dynamic presets, two RS modes and a rear-biased mode thanks to the RS torque splitter, with custom options on top. There’s plenty of driver-assistance safety tech on board too, but this is an Audi Sport car, so I gave that a glance rather than a deep dive.
The key thing is that it’s a plug-in hybrid. The EV screen lets you choose the battery level to hold, have the engine charge the battery, pick EV or hybrid running, and find charging points and set departure times. So it does everything an EV will do while also being a turbocharged V6 monster.
The driver’s display gets in on the act as well, with a central gauge showing whether you’re charging or using power (and how much), and an icon at the bottom showing petrol against battery level, EV or hybrid mode and fuel economy, if you really want to see it. The View button changes the layout easily, and the sections either side of the central gauge can be changed too. Then there’s the steering wheel, which is lovely, with a centre marker, contrast stitching, Dinamica, RS badging, a shortcut button to RS mode, another for an electric boost, and paddles.
As part of the launch, we took the RS5 out onto some twisty roads, and that answered my biggest question straight away: does the weight make it less agile? No. It’s a heavy car, but the wide track, wide tyres and RS torque splitter mean it corners flat. You just turn the wheel and it goes around corners at unbelievable speeds, and the steering is incredibly responsive.
Additionally, put your foot down out of a corner and the V6 sounds quite beautiful. Audi went through a phase of curtailing exhaust noise, but not anymore. They’ve opened up the taps and we’re all hearing the music (Dylan would approve). The pickup is the big thing, though. It makes your stomach drop. So, so good.
The launch racetrack session was run on some really dodgy tyres, deliberately, which meant you could slip the car as much as you wanted, and boy did it oblige. It will drift, slide and do everything you ask of it, but in a really controlled, understandable fashion. It was so much fun. But back on grippy P Zeros, it sticks to the road and carries good speeds through corners (probably speeds it shouldn’t be doing), and if the car’s ability gets ahead of yours, the carbon ceramic brakes stop it on a dime, pretty much. They’re an expensive option, but my goodness, what a difference they make. Visibility is pretty good to the front and sides but narrow out the fastback rear, which isn’t a big worry since most of the time you’re facing forward.
The one real problem is a mechanical clunk when you slow down, coming into a junction or rolling to a stop. It’s audible and really quite prominent through the car, and it feels like the car not quite working out what you’re doing with the electric motor, most likely the engine switching off and decoupling as it reverts to EV running. I’m not sure whether it fills me with confidence (because it feels mechanical), or whether it’s something I’d worry about. I’m sure Audi has done its research, and marrying a dialled-up turbocharged V6 to an EV powertrain was always going to be a tricky task. Once it’s on the move, that’s where the payoff is. Over my driving I averaged 8.4L/100km, which isn’t bad at all considering I opened up the taps from time to time.
Yes, you can drive it like a normal human being, use EV mode and get the fuel use right down, but honestly you’d want to drop the kids off, head to the racetrack, put some disastrous tyres on and have an absolute mental time with it.
As for sedan vs Avant, the sedan looks good, but with an Audi Sport car the Avant is kind of the done thing, and the fact that the wagon is still on offer is just cool. It’s almost a dual identity for a car that already has a dual identity. That’s a lot of identities.
So, is the electrified RS5 worthy of the RS badge? Having driven it on road and track in both sedan and Avant forms, I’m giving it a big thumbs up, because it offers all the thrills it had before even though (like me) it’s put on a ton of weight.
It’s a bit of a catch-22: safety tech has made cars heavier, EVs have made performance so accessible that a new Audi Sport product simply has to be quick, and you almost can’t do that without some form of electricity these days. If I were weight-saving, I’d ditch the passenger screen (I don’t use it, and if a passenger changes my radio station there’s trouble), and I’d question the carbon in high-impact places outside and the piano black and Dinamica inside. But those are all options you can leave off (and carbon’s light, to be fair).
As tested, our RS5 PHEV Sedan came in at $194,990, and despite the weight, the electricity and everything else, there’s no mistaking this is a proper Audi Sport product. Dylan got booed for plugging in, but I won’t be booing this one. After all, the times, they are a-chargin’.
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