2022 Audi E-Tron S Sportback review: Is this the strongest electric high-performance SUV?

The headline grabbing thing about the Audi E-Tron S Sportback is that it’s the first production electric car with three motors, and it has 496hp with almost 1,000Nm of torque.

That makes it sound like you need to do F1-driver-style neck exercises before you receive the key, but even Audi’s fire-snorting RS cars almost always have a lovely, placid side to them that’s perfect for daily life, as everything from the RS 4 Avant to the monstrous, Vader-like RS 6 Avant has shown.

The E-Tron S – it’s also the first electric Audi S car – mixes jolting electric thrills with quite a bit of practicality, though as expected it’s also not the most efficient nor longest-ranging EV around.

We’ll need a little unpacking here if you’re totally new to Audis: ‘E-Tron’ is the brand’s name for its EVs – we have the ‘regular’ E-Tron , which was the first Audi EV. It’s an SUV, but Audi later on added the E-Tron Sportback, which has a coupe-SUV body shape. There’s also the E-Tron GT, a fast electric sedan, which comes in regular and RS flavours.

Audi S cars should be more familiar to most people – they’re a step above normal Audi cars, but a notch below the full-bore high-performance RS cars. Example: There’s the normal A3, the S3, and then the RS 3.

If you put it side-by-side to our E-Tron S Sportback test car from before, it doesn’t look hugely different on the screen and that’s because the orange car already packed the S-Line kit which makes the front end resemble the true S model, and it also had optional 21-inch wheels. A ‘regular’ E-Tron looks less sporty, in comparison.

But the S has more stance, as modders term it. The E-Tron S gains wider fenders (a considerable 23mm on each fender) and paired with the optional 22-inch 285/35 Audi Sport wheels (S$6,337), it gives the S an immediately more aggro attitude. In fact the car ends up, at 1,976mm, 50mm wider than the standard model, and even wider than a Lamborghini Huracan (1,946mm).

The interior’s also similar to the Sportback we drove : Dark headliner, S-badged door sills, S Sport seats, perforated leather elements most notable on the steering wheel, which is itself a flat-bottomed one with the S logo.

In the day-to-day, the E-Tron S remains perfectly luxurious and practical. The car’s digital cockpit layout with three screens is the same as on its brothers, and easy enough to use. Though susceptible to finger prints, the fit and finish is of a very high level.

The space for rear passengers is good, with spacious, deep footwells and no ‘high-knees’ effect (see Mercedes-EQ EQA, BMW i4). Boot space, like the normal Sportback, shrinks to 615-litres compared to the SUV, but is still good for a midsized lux SUV. There’s an auto tailgate but no boot-side seat folders.

Parking and low-speed manuvers are where the S differs, with nearly five extra centimetres of width being quite obvious, since it makes the car almost two-metres wide. The comprehensive parking camera (with 3D ‘outside’ and 360 top-down views) helps mitigate this, but like other coupe SUV, visibility is not the best. 

For all that verbal and visual sibilance, there’s also a little more to match it on the road: The huge 285 section tyres do generate a little more roar and thump, which will be very familiar to those who drive big/performance SUVs with huge wheels, the contrast being the utter lack of engine noise/vibrations. The car’s air suspension is flexible and allows you to waft along in comfort, but also keeps the weight in check when going hard.

There’s a plethora of drive modes (Efficiency, Comfort, Auto, Allroad, Dynamic, Individual) which diddle the e-drivetrain, steering, and adaptive air suspension, accordingly.

At full bore, the car really sells the freight train analogy, as it gains speed with unrelenting pace. It’s not as violent as the Tesla Model 3 Performance, or the RS E-Tron GT, but it feels fast due to the high seating position and that near 1,000Nm of torque. 

Does the triple motor layout at least double the fun? Driving in a legal and socially-acceptable manner on Singapore’s roads, it’s honestly hard to say.

You do feel it rocket out of corners with less understeer than the normal E-Trons, even the E-Tron GT, but the car is big and powerful enough that you really need a racetrack, or the Autobahn,  for it to be obvious. 

It’s definitely not as obvious as the Audi RS 3 (our on-track Singapore review is out in April) whose RS Torque Split Rear enables it to vector torque to each rear wheel, much like the E-Tron S does.

The big difference is, this is a big, heavy GT-ish SUV rather than a hot hatch where those things are easier to test without them going to heck.  Also, that car weighs around 1,600kg and the E-Tron S is a entire, staggering one tonne more. 

And along that line, the E-Tron S feels like a RS Q8 or similar: A car that’s capable of semi-wondrous feats of driving, at least to our simple brains, if you can ignore the weight, trust the grip of the tyres, and simply hurl it into the corner.

It would be staggeringly quick on A-roads, and probably B-roads if a brave driver can manage the weight/width, but at least the very strong brakes mean you don’t re-enact the locomotive impression too thoroughly. 

Charging remains the same as the normal E-Tron, which is decent by modern standards, and the battery capacity is identical.

The S is rated for marginally higher consumption according to its LTA-approved figures – 26kWh/100km compared to the normal E-Tron 55 at 23.2kWh.100km but over the course of our 200km with the car, we cleaved close to the claimed figures – 26.2kWh/100km, which would deliver around 330km on one charge. 

It’s certainly not as efficient as the new EV range champ, the BMW i4, but it’s a high-performance EV so we didn’t expect it to. But it’s not bad, considering the extra weight and fast driving for very scientific test purposes. 

Paying the cost to be e-boss 

With the recent ARF bump, the E-Tron S isn’t cheap ringing in at almost $482k with COE and VES included – compare that to the $350k-ish for the regular E-Tron Sportback 50. But if you do look at the typical premium for an S car (Audi A3 $190k vs S3 $290k, Audi Q5 S$292k, SQ5 $387k) it’s really not that far off. 

There is also another price to pay for e-performance: Road tax. Since the LTA simply lumps all the motor outputs together instead of the actual output itself  you pay more for road tax – S$6,146 per annum, instead of the ‘actual’ road tax for a 370kW EV, at $5,051.

In contrast, a 4.0-litre V8 biturbo with 612hp only pays $3,750 a year – a bit of an anachronistic bargain, and telling of a bit of misguided calculation on the LTA’s part. If you really wanted to show power output, you could always put a car on a dyno – just saying.  

That’s hardly the E-Tron S’s fault though, and despite the big cost, it’s actually not an unsensible one in a way. Looking at it another way – the Tesla Model X is still nowhere to be seen officially, and the BMW iX3, Jaguar I-Pace, and Mercedes-EQ EQC don’t have S-level high-performance just yet.

So as far as electric, high-performance SUVs go, the E-Tron S is for now, the single, strongest example of the breed.  

Audi E-Tron S Sportback