TESTED: 2022 Audi e-tron GT Beats EPA Range by 35 Miles – Edmunds.com

The 2022 Audi e-tron GT is the long-awaited complement to Porsche’s all-electric Taycan 4S. Although they are nearly identical in dimensions and share the majority of their underlying hardware (electric motors and batteries), the more extroverted Porsche is naturally the one that hogs the headlines. But the e-tron GT is an impressive machine in its own right, and as a GT or "grand tourer," it hints at an extra measure of cruising comfort.
According to its official EPA range estimate, the e-tron GT is capable of cruising 238 miles on a full battery charge before needing to plug in again. That’s 18 miles more than the EPA projects for the 2021 Taycan 4S with the equivalent 93.4-kWh battery option, a.k.a. Performance Battery Plus.
But if you’ve been following our EV range testing, you know that the 2020 Taycan 4S, which had an official EPA range of 203 miles, covered a remarkable 323 miles on our test loop. That’s nearly 60% better than the EPA figure, the biggest gap we’ve seen to date by far.
So we were very curious to see if the Audi e-tron GT would return a similarly astonishing result. Here’s how it panned out.
Edmunds tests every new electric vehicle on the same real-world driving loop to see just how far it can travel from a full charge down to zero miles remaining. If you scroll through our EV range leaderboard, you’ll see that most EVs have matched or exceeded their EPA range estimates in our testing. Much of that has to do with our ability to test near-ideal conditions year-round.
Over the course of our eight-hour stint behind the e-tron GT’s wheel, the average temperature was 70 degrees, which is very comparable to the 73-degree average on the day we tested the overperforming 2020 Taycan 4S.
At the end of the day, we traveled a total of 273 miles in the 2022 e-tron GT. That’s 35 miles, or 14.7%, better than its EPA estimate, but short of the 2020 Taycan’s Edmunds test result by 50 miles. Both vehicles were running 20-inch wheels with all-season tires, but the Audi does weigh slightly more when similarly equipped.
Overall, the e-tron GT’s range performance puts it in 14th place overall, 10 spots behind the Taycan on our real-world range leaderboard.
While the total range of a vehicle continues to dominate the EV conversation, energy consumption is an important factor as well. Energy consumption is what determines how much your miles will cost you. The unit of measurement for consumption, the kilowatt-hour, can be thought of as the EV equivalent of a gallon of gasoline. Just like gas, the price of electricity varies depending where you live. For example, you’ll pay about 10 cents per kilowatt-hour in Idaho as of this writing, whereas in Hawaii it’ll run you about 33 cents.
So, what can 2022 Audi e-tron GT owners expect to pay at "the pump"? After charging the battery back to full, we calculated an Edmunds consumption rate of 37.2 kWh/100 miles, which is 9.3% more efficient than the EPA estimate of 41 kWh/100 miles. That means that if we lived in Hawaii, our 273-mile trip in the e-tron would have cost us $33.51, while if we lived in Idaho, that same trip would cost just $10.16.
How does that compare to the Porsche Taycan? For the Taycan 4S, we measured a consumption rate of 32.3 kWh/100 miles. So that same 273 miles in the Taycan 4S would have cost $29.10 in Hawaii and $8.82 in Idaho. You’d save a few bucks with the Taycan, especially where electricity prices are higher, but the difference isn’t really enough to recommend one over the other.
How about a gasoline-powered rival? Consider the sporty V8-powered hatchback alternative in Audi’s lineup, the 2021 Audi RS 7, which is priced in the same ballpark. Running the RS 7 for 273 miles on premium fuel would have set us back $72.91 in Hawaii ($4.54 per gallon) and $66.64 in Idaho ($4.15 per gallon) at current prices, assuming we got the RS 7’s 17 mpg combined.
Based on these numbers, you could save an estimated $1,605 per year in Hawaii and a whopping $2,118 per year in Idaho in fuel costs driving an Audi e-tron GT for 10,000 miles a year instead of the RS 7. However, you should really hear what the RS 7’s V8 sounds like before deciding it’s not worth the premium.
For more information on how we test EV range and how each vehicle performed, we invite you to visit our Real World vs. EPA testing page, which includes both our EV range leaderboard and a table with detailed test results. Our EV range leaderboard is embeddable and will automatically update every time we add a new vehicle.
The 2022 Audi e-tron GT may not be quite as efficient as its Taycan sibling, but it still manages to deliver an admirable 273 miles of real-world range in ideal weather conditions. It should be noted that opting for larger wheels or sportier tires will have a negative impact on range, so that’s something to keep in mind when speccing out your performance EV. For our latest comprehensive ratings of all electric vehicles, head over to Edmunds’ EV rankings page.
Jonathan Elfalan has worked in the automotive industry since 2005. As a director of vehicle testing at Edmunds, Jonathan has tested and reviewed thousands of cars and written thousands of car-related articles over the course of his career. Jonathan got his start testing cars for Road & Track magazine as a newly minted mechanical engineer grad from University of California, Irvine, and has also contributed to Motor Trend and the Associated Press. He likes to say he learned to drive a manual transmission in a rear-wheel-drive mid-engine vehicle but often omits it was his family’s 1991 Toyota Previa minivan.
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