Electric cars have revolutionized every aspect of the automotive landscape down to the strange fact that anyone can pull up to the drag strip in a four-door Tesla commuter car and challenge legit supercars with confidence. Of course, the truth is that tires and traction make up as much of drag racing as all-out power and torque, so what happens when a Quattro-equipped Audi RS6 Avant with its burly twin-turbocharged V8 attempts to show Tesla's relatively affordable Model 3 in Performance trim what true all-wheel-drive traction means? Well, the UK-based YouTube channel CarWow recently set out to discover just that.
Room For The Family
America's long-standing love-hate relationship with hot hatches and sport wagons regularly leaves many foreign manufacturers hesitant to ship some of their best products to these shores. But every now and then, a company like Audi builds up the courage, and the results so far for the RS6 Avant look promising. With bulging haunches, a futuristic-yet-muscular trim design ethos, the wagon looks ready to rumble, even with the whole family and dog inside. A twin-turbo 4.0-liter V8 shared with the likes of Porsche's Cayenne Turbo and Lamborghini's Urus helps too. In this case, it is tuned to produce 591 horsepower and 590 lb-ft of torque (CarWow's stats bringing up the old SAE vs DIN debate, as usual) that's routed to all four wheels through an eight-speed dual-clutch gearbox.
Tesla Trouble
The RS6 Avant starts at a whopping $109,000 here in America, which is roughly double what a Model 3 in Performance spec would run. The Tesla here benefits from all-wheel drive as well, thanks to dual motors mounted front and rear that combine to produce the equivalent of 450 horsepower and 471 lb-ft of torque—the latter available from 1 RPM, critically, which could lead to some trouble for the Audi as it waits for its turbochargers to spool up. Despite the skateboard-style battery pack, the Tesla also steps up to the line with a weight advantage of nearly 1,000 pounds. Watch the vid to see whether internal combustion can take charge (pun fully intended) against all-electric low-end torque.
Sources: youtube.com and audiusa.com.