Porsche Taycan 4S vs. Audi e-tron GT

Which battery-powered saloon should you really buy?

By Dan Prosser / Sunday 16 May 2021 / Loading comments

How different can these two cars really be? Platform sharing is by no means new, but by using fundamentally the same underpinnings and electric powertrains – motors, battery stacks, 800-volt electrical architectures and all – the Porsche Taycan and Audi e-tron GT take copying one another’s homework to entirely new levels.

They look quite different, the Audi more striking in its design and the Porsche something of a minimalist. But both have tightly-wrapped sculptural forms, as though their bodies have been shrink wrapped around hard points that almost aren’t there. How low their bonnets are and how swollen their haunches illustrate just how much more freedom car designers have when working with compact electric powertrains. They won’t be mourning the demise of the combustion engine the way many of us will.

For all that they look unalike from outside, within their cabins the Taycan and e-tron GT appear to have nothing in common whatsoever. The Porsche’s interior is so simple it’s almost plain. With the trio of crisp digital displays shut down, you just see flat black surfaces from door to door. There are almost no physical buttons at all, plus a seating position that sits you so close to the ground you wouldn’t believe you were sat atop a thick slab of battery cells.

The Taycan’s cabin is so well built and its materials so high-grade that it sets new standards not just for Porsche and not just for electric cars, but for anything that can be bought for less than £100,000. And the e-tron GT? Its dashboard design is far busier with those angular forms that characterise all modern Audi interiors, plus hard and shiny plastics that the Porsche would sneer at.

You sit slightly higher in the e-tron GT, looking down upon a cabin that looks and feels…familiar. Honestly, this could be any other upmarket Audi. It almost feels twee nowadays to toggle a physical button to change the AC temperature or cycle through driving modes rather than jab away at a digital display. If preferring the e-tron GT’s approach to that taken by the Taycan makes me a Luddite, hand me that mallet so I can smash this cotton mill to bits.

Neither the Audi nor the Porsche offers quite as much rear seat space as you might expect. At six-foot tall I found I had enough legroom to be comfortable over a longer journey in either one, but both were just a little mean on headroom.

So yes, they look quite different and their cabins, for the most part, are very unalike, but the Taycan and e-tron GT can hardly be said to have profoundly different characters on those grounds. So is that it then? Are we to accept that two cars from sister companies that share electrical gubbins are essentially one and the same? Well no, not at all. In fact, those far-reaching commonalities mean Porsche and Audi have actually had to work harder than ever on chassis tuning, steering calibration and the like just to inject some individuality.

The outcome of all of that is that you can jump from the Taycan into the e-tron GT, drive the very same stretch of road you’ve just silently swept along and kid yourself the two cars have no DNA in common at all. As things to drive, these two barely seem to share a single gene.

We’re testing the Taycan 4S and the (for now) base model e-tron GT, rather than the outrageously powerful Turbo or RS variants. These are the ones most people will actually buy. The Porsche costs from £83,580 and the Audi from £79,900. But those are merely starting points. The Taycan in question was specced up to a wholesome £97,906 with the Performance Battery Plus (£3906), Carmine Red paint (£1683) and rear-wheel steering (£1650), plus plenty more besides. The e-tron GT we had on the day, meanwhile, would set you back an eye-watering £109,115. You could very nearly have the 646hp RS e-tron GT for that.

Why so costly? This particular car has the Vorsprung upgrade package, which adds air springs (they’re standard on the Taycan 4S) and rear-wheel steering, plus some additional kit. That package will set you back £25,000 and bump the price of your e-tron GT to within a couple of grand of the range-topping RS. Even Audi UK says most buyers simply won’t bother.

With two motors apiece, one at either end, both the Porsche and Audi offer 530hp (the Taycan’s Performance Battery Plus ramps that up to 571hp with launch control) and they’ll sprint to 62mph in around four seconds. Audi claims a 298 mile range for the e-tron GT and Porsche 288 miles for the Taycan, which you’re only likely to achieve in the real world with a concerted effort.

Those are the impressive numbers. The less edifying ones are 2,351 and 2,295, the weight in kilograms with a driver on board for the Audi and Porsche respectively. One reads those figures and sees a problem that will soon need to be addressed. Perhaps when the charging network throughout Europe and the rest of the developed world is both dependable and widespread, these cars will get away with using far smaller batteries and become less lamentably corpulent because of it. That does seem a way off.

For all its mass, the Taycan 4S is a staggeringly good thing to drive. Fast, slow, town or country, it’s just so capable. Its air springs give it the kind of ride quality that soothes your aches and pains, all the bumps in the road surface ironed away effortlessly while – and this is the clever bit – the body stays level and calm. You’re not tossed about this way and that, which means you sit in the Taycan even on a B-road as serenely as you would in an armchair.

It’s quiet during acceleration, of course, and quiet at a cruise with so little wind and road noise. That all gives the Taycan redoubtable grand touring credentials, except that it won’t go terribly far before needing its batteries replenished. And yet, it’s so crushingly effective along a flowing back road as well. There’s taut body control and prodigious grip, plus a very real sense that its centre of gravity is so close to the deck it’s almost scraping along the asphalt. With the batteries where they are, the bulk of the car’s weight is close to the road, helping the Taycan to feel stable, sure-footed and freakishly agile.

But really it’s the steering. That’s what blows you away. One way or another, Porsche’s engineers have been able to make this 2.3-tonne electric car steer with much of the precision and clarity of the 1,600kg 911. It’s a thread that runs all the way from one to the other, and it means you guide the Taycan along a road with great confidence.

Of course, it feels massively brisk as well. Crucially, though, its performance isn’t physically uncomfortable (which you can’t say about the two Turbo variants) but nor do you ever long for more. Goldilocks would drive a 4S.

All of that augers very well indeed for the e-tron GT. Or does it? Given what Porsche has been able to achieve with this toolkit, anything less than genuine brilliance will seem a failure. If the Taycan steers like a Porsche, the e-tron GT steers a lot like an Audi. Rather than the crisp, reassuring response you find in the Porsche, in the Audi you discover a lighter wheel with vaguer responses and no sense of connection at all. At least it’s entirely free of slack and natural in its weighing, though.

Like the Taycan, this air-sprung e-tron GT rides very well indeed, even on its optional 21-inch wheels. Better than the Porsche? Perhaps, but there’s almost nothing in it. I was surprised to hear so much more wind and tyre noise in the Audi, however, having expected it to major even more on long distance refinement. After all, that GT badging is fairly unequivocal, while Porsche tends to refer to its electric saloon as a four-door sports car.

You feel the same resolute grip and absolutely steadfast traction in the Audi, but there’s more movement in the body, both as it leans in corners and rises and falls over crests and undulations. Meanwhile, where the Porsche seamlessly juggles energy recuperation with pad against disc during braking, its pedal offering consistently firm pressure against the ball of your foot, the Audi’s leftmost pedal twitches and shivers beneath your toes.

The e-tron GT’s barrel-like motors make such light work of the car’s enormous mass you wonder what elemental forces are at play. Ah yes, magnetism. But while you wouldn’t crave more speed, it’d not be unusual to drive the Taycan a while, swap into the e-tron GT and wish from it more detailed steering, sharper body control, a more solid brake pedal and altogether more cohesion.

The Taycan 4S is a better car to drive than the e-tron GT, but the takeaway from all of this for me is that even in this new electric age, two cars can share so much and yet still feel so different.

SPECIFICATION | AUDI E-TRON GT VORSPRUNG

Engine: Permanently excited electric motor, one per axle, 93.4kWh battery
Transmission: Single-speed (front) twin-speed (rear), all-wheel drive
Power (hp): 530 (launch control overboost, otherwise 476)
Torque (lb ft): 465 (launch control maximum)
0-62mph: 4.1sec
Top speed: 152mph
Weight: 2,276kg (EU unladen)
MPG: N/A (280-mile range)
CO2: 0g/km (driving)
Price: £106,000 (Vorsprung starting; price as tested £112,350, including Kemora Grey metallic paint for £950, e-tron sports sound for £500, 21-inch 10-spoke Trapezoidal aero alloys** for £1,740, extended leather pack for £1,665 and locking rear differential** for £1,495)
** These won't be offered on final UK-spec models (this is an early right-hand drive press car) outside of the RS range. With these non-UK options removed, price as tested is £109,115