Audi RS 5 Avant and sedan first drive: Yea! Heavy and a Bottle of Bread

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All the fuss from Audi Sport about the RS 5 going electric, complete with advertising campaign referencing Bob Dylan at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival (look it up kids, or watch Timothy Chalamet in No Direction Home ) is a bit of a smoke screen.

Audi Sport went electric(ish) ages ago. It's had mild hybrid powertrains since 2019's RS 6 and the RS e-tron GT of 2021 was full-BEV.

The RS 5 is its first "high-performance plug-in hybrid", to quote the company's media material. But that's not really the controversial bit. The manufactured going-electric kerfuffle is really Audi Sport on the offensive about potential criticism of the RS 5's added weight and complexity.