Audi Sport, Ingolstadt’s storied performance division, will have a 100% electrified line-up by the end of this decade, including searing-hot, pure-electric successors to its quickest and most potent combustion cars, from the RS3 hot hatch to the RS7 grand tourer.
Audi will “put more focus on the RS brand” over the coming years, according to Volkswagen Group CEO Oliver Blume, building on the hugely successful formula of today’s RS E-tron GT in adding sporting credentials and more purposeful styling cues to its standard models.
Furthermore, the company is dedicated to ensuring that the RS badge doesn’t become a mere trim level. Audi Sport managing director Sebastian Grams highlighted the popularity of the hottest E-tron GT (every third car built is an RS) as a sign that “the world is changing and our target portfolio is changing, so the target customers are changing”.
He continued: “We have to focus also on the new target groups, which are growing up, and therefore we definitely believe that electrification and high performance go really, really well together.”
RS versions of the upcoming A6 E-tron electric estate and Q6 E-tron crossover will be the first new full-fat Audi Sport EVs, but following quickly behind will be outlandishly styled and hugely powerful sporty takes on the upcoming electric replacements for the A3, A4, A6 and A7.
Audi hasn’t confirmed plans for that last model, but chief designer Marc Lichte described the recently revealed Activesphere concept as “like an A7 elevated” and suggested that a production version could arrive in around 2027, and no doubt a fiery RS variant would follow soon after. The brand is now working on “how you give the special character from the exterior design perspective to an RS model”, said Grams.
“We believe that there needs to be a differentiation between a normal model and an RS model. This will be a USP – or characteristic DNA – in the electric world.”