Author: EVAI

The new Mercedes-Benz E-Class is a masterclass in refinement. It offers sleek lines, a smooth ride and buttery engines, especially the straight-sixes. I was expecting more of the same from the current top variant, the E53, just with way more power.

Yes, it’s quick and clever with its plug-in hybrid powertrain, but it doesn’t punch you in the stomach and make your ears ring like I thought a proper unhinged AMG should.

The last gas-powered E63 I drove certainly did. You look at its flared wheel arches filled by aggressive black wheels and you think, “Oh, my! This thing is going to rearrange my internal organs,” but it stops short of doing that.

It’s not all that different than the four-cylinder E400e hybrid, just faster and with far more aggressive styling.

What Is It?

The E53 is a 585-hp plug-in hybrid sedan that combines a 3-liter turbocharged straight-six engine from the E450 with an electric motor, feeding its power to all four wheels. It’s the top end of the E-Class lineup for now, as there isn’t a more aggressive E63 (yet).

My tester had the Edition 1 pack, which brought several visual changes, including decals on the sides of the car. They look ok, but are a bit much on an E-Class. What I did really like was that Mercedes didn’t advertise that the E53 is a plug-in hybrid or in any way electrified. There is no silly blue detailing (usually associated with electric vehicles, for some reason) nor any badging denoting it’s also powered by electricity. 

It’s a great plug-in hybrid at that, with a remarkably smooth straight-six engine that starts up almost imperceptibly and plenty of power in electric mode. It’ll go over 62 miles (100 km) on electricity alone according to the WLTP test cycle. That’s an excellent number for a PHEV (although not in China), but its real-world electric range, I observed, is closer to 43-44 miles (69-71 km), matching its EPA range claim.

It’s really good around corners, too, with standard rear-wheel steering that disguises its 5,100-lb curb weight.

When the time comes to fire it out of a corner, there’s none of the drama you expect from an AMG. It just sticks and goes, and it’s not even that noisy. The CLE 53 that I drove before it—which has a version of the same engine but with a mild hybrid setup—had a much more brutal and exciting powerband than the E53 and it sounds better too. It’s much closer to delivering the kind of experience I expect from an AMG, even without an angry V-8.

A Touch Of Class With A Dash Of Hard Plastic

Mercedes has been making some questionable decisions for the interiors of all its cars—like its usage of haptic and capacitive controls—but it also gets a lot of things right. Sure, I would have liked the soft-touch plastic to go all the way down the door cards and the center console, but the design was great, and the feeling of vault-like solidity was present throughout.

My well-equipped tester had the optional bucket seats. Don’t skip them, as the standard seats are better suited for appointments, not apexes. The steering wheel, which had suede grips, is absolutely fantastic to hold. It’s the kind of sporty wheel that makes you want to downshift for the heck of it, just to revel in the burble of the exhaust.

And even though I usually complain about touch controls on helms, Mercedes’ are the best I’ve tried of this kind, and they just seem to work really well. Not better than physical buttons, but close.

The third screen in front of the passenger is pretty pointless, though. I know this is a trend originating in China that is now sweeping the car industry, but I just don’t get the need for a third screen when the central one is well within the passenger’s reach and line of sight and it offers all the functionality they would need. The center screen in the E-Class is one of the best I’ve ever used.

Mercedes is definitely on to something with having the central touchscreen placed at such an angle. Since you can use it while resting your elbow on the armrest, touching the screen precisely is much easier than in other cars where it’s placed vertically and higher up on the dash, and your arm is dangling in mid-air as you try to adjust the climate control. Unfortunately, Mercedes is moving away from this design with its future models, which will be a step back in ergonomics. The layout in the new CLA is a sign of things to come.

Overall, the interior of the E53 looked and felt pretty special, especially with the strong yellow accents throughout the cabin, including on the seats, the seat belts and on the dashboard in my First Edition tester. With the scratchier plastics lower down in the cabin, it doesn’t quite feel like a vehicle costing almost €120,000 ($136,000) as tested, but it’s undeniably more special in AMG trim. In the U.S., a base E53 costs around $89,000, and a similarly specced example would cost around $120,000.

Quick On Paper

Scanning over the spec sheet and seeing it has 585 hp and a peak torque rating of 553 pound-feet (750 Nm), I was expecting the E53 to light my pants on fire with its performance. But it doesn’t.

That’s partly because it’s quite a heavy car, and even with that much power, it still needs almost four seconds to reach 62 mph (100 km/h). You expect fireworks to go off when you floor it, but you just get dynamic mood lighting. My passengers guessed 400 hp—nobody believed its actual power figure.

To unleash the full fury that the AMG badge demands, you absolutely need to specify the AMG Dynamic Plus package, which my tester, even though very well equipped, didn’t have. It ups the power to 600 hp and gives the car launch control, or Race Start, as Mercedes calls it, and I’m pretty sure it makes a difference. It also adds an electronically controlled limited-slip differential in the back, active engine mounts and upgraded brakes, together making this a more serious driver’s car and better through the corners.

Mercedes also needs to offer a louder exhaust for this car. It’s just too quiet and restrained for an AMG, even by 2025’s increasingly stringent and restrained European noise (and pollution) standards. I’d even take a bit more fake noise through the speakers to break the sublime silence that dominates being aboard any W214, even the E53.

Clark Kent, And Almost Superman

Switch off the creamy turbocharged six, and the electric motor, which lives in the nine-speed automatic transmission, does a surprisingly good job of moving the car and getting it up to speed. On its own, it produces 163 hp and 354 lb-ft (480 Nm) of torque. That’s just around 10% less than a base rear-wheel-drive Volkswagen ID.4.

There’s plenty of punch for around-town driving, and it quickly gets the car up to highway speeds. It can drive only on electrons at up to 87 mph (140 km/h), which means you can commute on the highway at the speed limit in most European countries.

Driving the E-Class in EV mode suits the car’s relaxed character very well. This is a car that just eats miles like few new cars can, and not having the thrum of combustion power just suits it very well. The fact that you get two different cars in one (a quiet and civilized EV for sedate driving and a powerful gas-burning sports sedan for when you want to get a move on) makes it a great car.

Thanks to 21.2 kWh of usable battery capacity, you can get around 43 miles (70 km) of real-world electric range if you drive the car normally in EV mode. That’s less than Mercedes’ claim that you can get 62 miles (100 km) of gas-free driving in this on the WLTP cycle, but it’s a respectable number that should allow you to run most of your errands emissions-free.

One of the things that makes any current-generation E-Class PHEV unique is the ability to DC fast-charge, which is relatively rare among PHEVs. The E can draw up to 60 kW, finishing the 10 to 80% dash in around 20 minutes. You can also use the 11 kW onboard charger to replenish the battery, which will take a few hours.

Another rare trait among PHEVs is powerful regenerative braking. Mercedes says the E53 can recuperate 120 kW under deceleration, which is more than some lower-powered EVs. This means if you descend a mountain road, you could top up the battery very quickly, and the regen is strong enough that it helps lessen the load on the friction brakes, which need to be used less.

The Best E-Class But Not The Best AMG

The E53 might be the best W214 variant specifically because of its dual character. There’s also the widebody kit that really makes it stand out in the shopping center parking lot, plus all the sporty interior touches that make both it and its occupants feel special.

In an age when automakers seem to be focusing more and more on crossovers and SUVs, Mercedes is staying true to what made it great and keeps making great sedans. It’s also great news that it’s doing the same with its pure electric sedans, which will be a lot more like its three-box combustion models than the jellybean EQ cars it sells today.

Having a traditional-looking Mercedes with classic sedan proportions and electric power is something we hope we’ll see very soon. Until then, the E53 is among the very best electrified Mercedes models that you can buy today—maybe the best—even if it doesn’t quite live up to the level of AMG lunacy that I expect from the brand.

• A Porsche Cayenne EV prototype secretly competed in a hill climb competition.
• It broke the previous record by four seconds.

The electric Porsche Cayenne, which should be revealed sometime this year, just smashed a hill climb record. Despite it not being exactly finished and ready for prime time yet, a camouflaged Cayenne EV prototype showed up at the Shelsley Walsh Hill Climb in the United Kingdom this past weekend and swept the floor with the competition.

As spotted by The Drive, the purple electric Cayenne was driven by Gabriela Jilkova, development driver at Porsche’s Formula E program, who gave it everything. In complete silence, Jilkova wrestled the battery-powered SUV along the 1,000-yard (914-meter) track in just 31.28 seconds.

That’s four seconds faster than the previous record for SUVs at Shelsley Walsh, set by a Bentley Bentayga W12, and a hair faster than the fastest production electric car, a Porsche Taycan Turbo S, which did the climb in 31.43 seconds.

“I’ll tell you what, for a big car, that is scuttering up the hill–something special,” the announcers said

Now, it’s worth noting that the Cayenne EV isn’t a production car just yet, but it’s still mighty impressive that an SUV was quicker than a sports sedan. In other words, if you were worried that the upcoming electric Cayenne would be boring or slow, this result should put your mind at ease.

We still don’t know a lot about the upcoming electric Cayenne. Based on the same PPE platform as the new Macan EV, the battery-powered Cayenne will be sold alongside a heavily reworked version of the current gas-powered model well into the 2030s. Initially, the new Cayenne was supposed to be electric-only, just like the new Macan, but Porsche toned down its ambitions recently after disappointing sales.

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Besides the electric Cayenne and Macan, Porsche is planning on introducing yet another crossover that will supposedly become the new flagship for the German automaker. Codenamed K1, the SUV is expected to offer seating for seven people when it hits the market sometime toward the end of the decade.

The Shelsley Walsh hill climb, where the Cayenne EV smashed the SUV record, is part of the 2025 British Hill Climb Championship. Located in Worcestershire, Shelsley Walsh is the oldest motorsport venue in the world to still use its original course, with the first recorded use going back to August 12, 1905.

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When I wrote that making a plug-in hybrid is a lot harder than you think, Mazda was on my mind. The company is struggling to electrify, in part because it’s small and only has so many resources, but also because of how central lightweight, affordable cars are to its identity.

But as Mazda faces the same tightening emission standards and consumer preferences that other brands have dealt with, it’s trying the same solutions: Hybrids. As the CX-90 and CX-70 plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) show, that’s easier said than done.

The company’s first U.S.-market plug-in hybrids got off to a rocky start. Teething issues with the early CX-90 PHEV in 2024 prompted journalist complaints (especially about its transmission), consumer headaches and a spot on Consumer Reports’ “Least Reliable SUVs of 2025” list.

Like I said: making a great hybrid is tricky business. While making a compelling EV is hard enough, first-time hybrid designs have to mesh two disparate power sources in a way that feels natural to the consumer. Get it wrong, as Mazda did, and the result is herky-jerky at best, and unreliable at worst. 

But the company has done a lot of work to fix this problem. It’s updated its PHEVs and refined their tuning, making them nicer to drive and, ideally, better suited for long-haul ownership. I sampled both to find out if Mazda has ironed out the kinks.

(Full Disclosure: Mazda loaned me both a CX-70 and a CX-90 for this review. Both vehicles arrived with a full tank of gas.)

I came away with mixed impressions. Mazda certainly has improved its hybrid system, yet the CX-90 and CX-70 themselves are not vehicles I would recommend. 

Driving experience

It may be confusing that I’m talking about the CX-90 and CX-70 as if they are the same vehicle. But they are.

With less budget to create a full-fledged lineup of SUVs than its competitors, Mazda opted for an odd strategy. It cut the third row out of the CX-90 and started selling it as a separate model. Bizarrely, the company dropped the base trim, too, so the CX-70 comes better equipped but with a higher starting price than its three-row twin: $51,400 for the base CX-90, $55,855 for the better-equipped CX-70. 

For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to focus on the CX-90. They drive exactly the same, and if you’re buying something the size of a three-row SUV, you might as well get three rows.

Regardless, you’re going to be piloting something ginormous. And while Mazda has long enjoyed a reputation for making fun-to-drive cars, it can’t outsmart physics. A CX-90 PHEV weighs 5,243 pounds, and you can feel all of them. On a switchback mountain road, it’s not a fun thing to drive, even if it handles securely. Mazda has tried the old trick here of making the steering extra heavy to make it feel “sporty,” but there’s no feel there.

There’s also too much weight to manage, and the car’s attempt to blend electric propulsion and internal combustion occasionally falters, making it hard to drive smoothly. I blame the transmission. The eight-speed automatic has been the subject of plenty of debates, customer issues and technical service bulletins to address issues with it. It’s better than it once was, and mostly fine around town, but it’s not smooth enough to make the driving experience pleasant. (Mazda did not reply to my request for comment on the CX-90’s transmission issues.) 

The engine is also gruff-sounding when you work it hard, and it sometimes revs higher than you’d expect given the load.

Even the driver aids get in the way of a smooth experience, especially on back roads. There are multiple layers of land-departure mitigation, and even after turning two such systems off, I still found the car nudging me around on windy roads.

In highway driving, the CX-90 was better. Yet it’s still stiffer than other three-row SUVs, so it’s not exactly a cushy cruiser. That’d be ok if the reward was a truly great driving experience, but for such a ho-hum SUV on backroads, I’d expect a more supple cruiser.

Range & Efficiency

The CX-90 can go 26 miles on its 17.8 kilowatt-hour battery alone on the Environmental Protection Agency’s cycle, per Mazda. I believe it. That roughly tracks with what I experienced, though you’ll blow through your miles quickly if you’re on a high-speed freeway in EV mode.

Unfortunately, getting more granular on efficiency is challenging given the information available to the driver. Mazda shows miles per gallon and miles per kilowatt hour on the same display, but by nature as one goes up the other falls. If your battery is depleted, you’ll burn up a bunch of fuel while getting a bajillion miles per kWh. In EV mode, that reverses.  

On balance, the EPA cycle says the CX-90 will get 56 miles per gallon equivalent (MPGe), factoring in the electric system. That’s a tick worse than you’d get in a Volvo XC90 plug-in, but acceptable. In general, the value proposition will depend more on your commute distance than the CX-90’s efficiency. If you go less than 20 miles a day and can charge at home, it should be all-electric most of the time. If you have a longer commute and don’t take a crazy number of road trips, consider electric options.

Interior

A spirited driving experience is not the main selling point for a family SUV. You know this, I know this. I wish Mazda did. Because not only is the CX-90 PHEV just-ok to drive, it’s also got a weird interior for its role.

It makes a good impression, sure. The interior looks great, especially in lighter tones, and everything feels premium. The seat surfaces are nice and the plastics are high-quality. Yet when it comes to usability, Mazda has always felt out of its depth making larger vehicles. The company just doesn’t do a great job of turning more space into usable compartments and features. 

Take the dashboard and center console. There’s a spot for your phone on the wireless charger, two cupholders and that’s it. There’s nowhere to throw the keys or your wallet without setting off the metal-detecting fault light for the wireless charger—which never seems to stop blinking. The cupholders are too small for a bottle, and the door panels aren’t great. The center console is small, and there are no additional cubbies.

That motif of poor usability continues throughout. Whether you opt for the CX-90 with three rows or the CX-70 with two, you won’t get a flat load floor. I’d likely blame the switch to a rear-wheel-drive architecture, an outlier in a segment that has gone front-wheel-drive-based for packaging reasons. That may also explain why the third row is cramped, and not a realistic option for many adults beyond quick errands.   

The seats fold down, but the resulting load floor slopes up to the second row of seats.

Photo by: Mack Hogan/InsideEVs

Sure, the CX-90 still has plenty of space. You’ll hardly find a modern three-row that can’t fit an apartment’s worth of crap in the back. But with 14.9 cubic feet of space behind the third row and 40.0 cubic feet behind the second, the Mazda manages to be toward the back of the pack when it comes to hauling either passengers or cargo. That battery has to go somewhere, I suppose.

Infotainment, Tech & UX

The Mazda CX-90 supports Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. This concludes the praise I will be giving it in the infotainment and tech sections.

The second car I ever reviewed was the then-new 2017 Mazda CX-5, and its technology felt outdated then. Eight years later and using broadly the same infotainment system, the CX-90 is unacceptably dated for a flagship product that debuted last year.

The entire system is run on a short and wide 12.3-inch infotainment screen. It is a touch screen, though you’d hardly know it. Touch controls work when you are using smartphone projection, and also when the car is stopped. Any time you’re in motion or in Mazda’s native system, you’re forced to use a rotary clickwheel. Think 2013 BMW iDrive, but less sophisticated. 

Navigation using the built-in system is, therefore, essentially unusable. The only way to input text is by using its rudimentary voice-control system or the rotary controller. All letters are laid out alphabetically around a circle, and you have to rotate around to click one at a time. That’s already indefensible, but you can’t even use it to find businesses or parks. You have to use a 2010-esque “POI search” where you refine by category first. Was the park I was looking for in sports and activities, government or outdoor? The answer is: Who cares, the Mazda couldn’t find it anyway. At least searching took a while!

The odd aspect ratio of the screen also means the rearview camera has a bizarre aspect ratio, stretching the whole field of view unnaturally and making it tough to judge distances. Charging and efficiency info is spare and hard to parse. The digital gauge cluster is also, in theory, customizable, but you get almost no choices for what to put there.

It’s all just too dated, too sloppy and too annoying. I understand that technology is not the core part of Mazda’s identity—I’ve owned a few Miatas, and recommended plenty of CX-5s. But the company still needs to find a way to take software far, far more seriously if it wants to exist in 10 years. 

Safety & ADAS

The CX-90 comes standard with adaptive cruise control, blind spot monitoring and forward collision braking. It also offers lane keeping, though the system was not particularly sophisticated. And given the weird jargon in the Mazda menus, it was not particularly easy to turn it off.

The CX-90 received a five-star overall safety rating from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, with four stars for its overall performance in front crash tests. The CX-90 is an Insurance Institute for Highway Safety Top Safety Pick+, that organization’s highest honor.

Pricing & Trims

The CX-90 PHEV starts at $51,400, far above the $39,500 starting price of the standard six-cylinder CX-90. Both numbers include delivery. But PHEVs come better equipped: Even the base Preffered model comes with leather, a moonroof, heated front seats and all the safety stuff.

Step up to the $56,355 Premium Sport version and you get a panoramic moonroof, 21-inch wheels and stop-and-go support for the adaptive cruise control system. The $59,405 Premium Plus version—which I tested—gets nicer leather, second-row captain’s chairs and cooled front seats.

There are no major option packages, but most of the colors cost an extra $595.  

Verdict

That leaves us with two questions. Do I recommend the CX-90 in general? And: Is the plug-in hybrid worth the extra cost? On both counts, I have to say not really.

The CX-90 is designed to be a family hauler, and by most metrics, it’s the worst in its class at hauling families. It has a bad third row, a bad cabin layout with not enough small-item storage and a small cargo hold for its class. Its interior looks nicer, but it does not feel designed for the rough-and-tumble life of small kids and pets. Its technology is unacceptably behind the times, and its value proposition isn’t great.

That value proposition gets worse when you step into the $50,000 PHEV, a product that isn’t smooth enough to be any company’s flagship. It may save you some gas money but—unless you can get the tax credit through the leasing loophole, which is likely to go away—you probably won’t make your money back before getting rid of the vehicle. Buyers looking for an electric option are better off with a Kia EV9, while hybrid buyers should probably stick with a Toyota Highlander or Hyundai Santa Fe.

Like I said: Making a good hybrid is hard. Mazda learned some hard lessons with its first attempt here in the U.S., and I’m sure it’s next generation will get better. But until the company refines the CX-90’s powertrain and wholly replaces its ancient tech suite, you should steer clear.

Contact the author: Mack.Hogan@insideevs.com. 

I keep a mental list of the fastest cars I’ve ever driven. It’s not a very lengthy or detailed one, just an informal ranking of the best of the best when it comes to speed.

The Bugatti Veyron was at the top of the list for a long time. I was also fortunate enough to drive a Lexus LFA once; it’s definitely on there. So is the Porsche 911 Turbo S—specifically, the 991 generation of that car, but any Turbo S can ruin a supercar’s day. Oh, and the Nissan GT-R Nismo. That could always take down the best of the best, even when it had been on sale long enough to buy its own cigarettes.

But a funny thing has happened over the past few years as I’ve shifted to covering electric vehicles. That mental list keeps getting reset—and in some ways, it almost doesn’t matter.

Despite a pervasive myth to the contrary, nearly all EVs are quick, and just about every EV is going to be quicker than its gas-powered equivalent. The BMW i5 M60 is better than the current M5. A Ford Mustang Mach-E GT will outclass pretty much all of its V8 cousins. My dual-motor Kia EV6 is quicker than any gas-powered car I ever owned, and it’s not even an EV6 GT.

Hell, even a humble electric Volvo can pack 400 horsepower these days and isn’t to be messed with at the stoplight. And none of those cars are two-door supercars; they’re often just ordinary sedans and crossovers that anyone can live with. 

So the fact that America these days seems dead-set on backsliding to gas-powered cars, with some brands happy to go along for the ride, feels like a step in the wrong direction for countless reasons. Cleaner air is one of them, certainly. So is technological competition.

But so is performance. Let’s be honest: in the race for speed, gas power has already been made irrelevant. 

Few cars prove that more than Audi’s heavily updated RS E-Tron GT. And after a few days with one, I’m not sure why anyone is supposed to care about gas-powered performance cars anymore. 

(Full Disclosure: Audi sent me an RS E-Tron GT to test for a week.)

Audi’s E-Tron GT has always kind of lived in the shadow of its close relative, the Porsche Taycan. I don’t really know how fair that is, but for the 2025 model year especially, it deserves to be considered and lauded in its own right. The American E-Tron GT lineup is now down to just two models: the S E-Tron GT, with “just” 670 horsepower, and the car you see here, the RS E-Tron GT Performance. 

Big name, but it comes with a lot of car. Most of the time, its 105 kilowatt-hour battery sends 818 hp to all four wheels. But when launch control and its Boost Mode are engaged, that jumps to 912 hp—making it the most powerful Audi ever, and with more juice than all but three of the top Taycan trims. 

It’s an absurd amount of power, really, and one that exceeds many supercars. But make no mistake: it is one. Even if it has four doors and a surprisingly cushy back seat (albeit one that’s pressed for headroom and legroom), the E-Tron GT is long, low and wide. From some angles, the design even evokes the old R8 supercar, or even the TT sports car, and I still consider myself a fan of both. There’s one big downside: how did Audi let Porsche get all the wagon versions? What an oversight. This thing deserves an Avant variant. 

Like the Taycan, the E-Tron GT received significant upgrades for 2025. Charging speeds are now at a class-leading 320 kilowatts, so it’ll go from 10% to 80% in just 18 minutes, according to Audi. The steering, adaptive air suspension, front and rear motors and more have all been upgraded.

You even get an impressive 278 miles of EPA-rated range, which read as high as 290 miles on a full charge at my house. That’s exceptionally good for its level of performance. 

You don’t see big improvements everywhere, of course. I rolled my eyes after I laid them upon Audi’s last-generation Multi-Media Interface (MMI) system, which has been thankfully replaced by Android Automotive OS-based software on newer EVs like the Q6 E-Tron. MMI is fine enough here, but the graphics, speed, menus and overall experience feel far from cutting-edge.

The front driver-facing display is highly customizable, which is a plus. So are the paddles on the steering wheel that let you adjust regenerative braking—albeit without true one-pedal driving, unfortunately.

But here’s the thing: if you get an E-Tron GT, you’re in it for the speed. And that’s where you’re really getting your money’s worth. 

The RS E-Tron GT Performance mixes comfort and outrageous performance perhaps better than any car I’ve tested before. Yes, really. It starts with that air suspension: in the standard Comfort mode, where I was content to leave it nearly all of the time, the ride is impeccably smooth over any type of pavement without sacrificing even an ounce of handling excellence. You can dial up the firmness with the RS driving modes, of course, but I seldom wanted to. 

Not when the car can handle like it does. And the handling prowess of the RS E-Tron GT Performance reset my understanding of physics. The car just takes any corner at any speed you want—no drama, no slippage, no understeering. It just goes. On an empty, curving highway, you can bank at far over the posted speed limit with utmost confidence, as if it were designed for every road to be the Ehra-Lessien test track.

This is where electric power presents a distinct advantage. Torque vectoring—the act of independently distributing power to individual wheels—can happen much, much more quickly here than on a gas-powered car. There, some system of processors and sensors would have to tell an engine to adjust its output to deliver the optimum amount of power to each wheel. On an EV, that process happens much more quickly, bordering on instantly.

As InsideEVs contributor Peter Nelson, who is a better and more track-proven driver than I’ll ever be, put it recently: “it completely threw my concept of cornering grip and G-force through a loop.” I would add that this thing feels built for some other planet than ours, something with different levels of gravity or physics; it is too good for the laws of nature we must abide by here on Earth. 

And that’s just the handling. In a straight line, I don’t see why anyone would care about V8 or V10 or V12 power after experiencing this car, save for some fondness for engine sounds. The RS E-Tron’s acceleration is utterly crushing. It uncorks that full power gradually, as if to make sure it’s what you want, but then it makes your stomach lurch as it silently shoots up to near triple-digit speeds.

Like the proper grand tourer it is, it never feels out of control. If you want, you can drive it as sedately as any other Audi sedan. But the power is stunning when you want it. Hit that steering wheel button that says “BOOST” and any sense of decorum gives way to utter violence: 10 seconds with a graphic countown where you get the full 912 hp. 

It doesn’t accelerate in this mode, so much as it ticks up to highway-and-beyond speeds seemingly faster than your brain can handle, all while you desperately keep your eyes on the road. 74. 85. 96. Tick, tick, tick. You will run out of road, or courage, or common sense before that 10 seconds is up. Most of the time, I called it around four.

Oh, and do yourself a favor and pin your head back to your seat before you try this. I didn’t, and my neck is still a bit sore today.

So with zero to 60 mph happening in a claimed 2.4 seconds—and Motor Trend’s instrumented testing got it down to 2.3—I have to reset my list again. This electric Audi is now as quick, if not slightly quicker, than that Veyron. And that car, at the time, cost $2.35 million.

You pay an immense price for all the speed on this Audi, too. It’s not $2 million, but it is $190,690 with options. Then again, that undercuts a lot of supercars in the $300,000 range and well beyond, all with zero tailpipe emissions and probably better handling. (Oh, and depreciation? I’m counting down the days.)

I suppose there are plenty of people who would welcome a return to fossil-fuel power. But those people just haven’t had seat time in a car like this yet. For me, the future of performance has never been more obvious—and I know that my list will have to be updated again soon enough. 

Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com