Audi reveals electric tearaways the e-tron GT and RS


Simon Wilgress-Pipe
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For those looking for cars with a bit of zip and pizzazz, electric options seemingly become more appealing with every new release. So it is that Audi has just revealed its e-tron GT.

It's not the brand's first foray into non-fossil fuel power – there are already a number of SUVs available – but you wouldn't need Perry Mason to help with your reasoning if you were to proffer the argument that this is its sportiest offering to date.

The e-tron GT is being mooted as an alternative to Tesla’s Model S and it shares many components with the Porsche Taycan, so it has some competition already.

Shape-wise, Audi has kept the e-tron GT very much along the lines of the concept vehicle it revealed a few years ago. It looks as sleek as anything else currently on the manufacturer’s roster, and rather more so than a few of its more humdrum siblings, in fact.

The e-tron GT is being presented in two guises – the e-tron GT quattro, and the RS e-tron GT. When it comes to power, the standard version produces 469 brake horsepower, a 0-100 kilometres per hour time of 4.1 seconds, and a top speed of 245kph. The RS is even faster, clocking in with 590bhp, 0-100kph in 3.3 seconds, while topping out at 250kph.

Plenty in those stats to get the speed fiends interested, then. The power comes from two electric motors (one to drive the front wheels, the other to do the same at the rear), and each e-tron has something called a boost mode that will up the power even more by a few percentage points.

When it comes to range, which is an all-important consideration in electric vehicles, of course, the specs claim drivers will get around 487km out of a full charge.

Audi is clearly thinking about the future with this vehicle – rather than the usual leather upholstery, the manufacturer says it has been fitted out with a “high-percentage” of recycled material.

Price-wise, the standard GT will cost €99,800 ($119,000), with the zippier RS version at €138,200 ($167,500).

Game Of Thrones Season Seven: A Bluffers Guide

Want to sound on message about the biggest show on television without actually watching it? Best not to get locked into the labyrinthine tales of revenge and royalty: as Isaac Hempstead Wright put it, all you really need to know from now on is that there’s going to be a huge fight between humans and the armies of undead White Walkers.

The season ended with a dragon captured by the Night King blowing apart the huge wall of ice that separates the human world from its less appealing counterpart. Not that some of the humans in Westeros have been particularly appealing, either.

Anyway, the White Walkers are now free to cause any kind of havoc they wish, and as Liam Cunningham told us: “Westeros may be zombie land after the Night King has finished.” If the various human factions don’t put aside their differences in season 8, we could be looking at The Walking Dead: The Medieval Years