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News

Next-Gen Audi RS5 Will Be a Plug-In Hybrid

Audi Sport is about to cross a line it’s been circling for years. The next-generation RS5 won’t just be faster, sharper, or louder—it’ll be electrified. For the first time, Audi’s compact performance coupe and Sportback will arrive with a plug-in hybrid powertrain, marking a pivotal shift for one of the brand’s most important RS models.

The news didn’t come via a splashy press release or a choreographed reveal. Instead, Audi accidentally let the cat out of the carbon-fiber bag with a briefly posted—and quickly deleted—LinkedIn update that plainly stated: “The new Audi RS 5… will be our first high-performance plug-in hybrid.” Whoops.

But the message is clear: the RS5 is heading into the electrified era, and Audi Sport is betting that batteries and boost can coexist with burnouts and Nürburgring lap times.

Why Audi Had to Go Hybrid

The writing has been on the wall. Europe’s looming Euro 7 emissions standards are brutally strict, and even Audi’s beloved twin-turbo V6 can’t survive on gasoline alone forever. The S5 already made the jump to mild-hybrid tech, so a plug-in RS5 was the logical next step.

Unlike mild hybrids, a PHEV RS5 will be able to drive on electric power alone—at least for short distances. That’s great for city driving and emissions compliance, but the real reason Audi is doing this is much more on-brand: more power.

Electric motors deliver instant torque, and when paired with a turbocharged engine, they create the kind of shove that makes modern super sedans feel like they’ve been rear-ended by a freight train. The RS5 has always been quick. The new one could be genuinely outrageous.

The Powertrain: V6 + Electricity = Trouble (the Good Kind)

Audi hasn’t confirmed specs yet, but all signs point to a familiar heart: the 2.9-liter twin-turbo V6 from the previous RS4 and RS5, which made 450 horsepower on its own. Add an electric motor to that, and you’re suddenly looking at a very serious number—likely well north of 500 hp.

Audi could go conservative, or it could aim straight at the king of the electrified sports-sedan hill: the Mercedes-AMG C 63 E Performance. That car uses a turbocharged four-cylinder and an electric motor to produce a bonkers 680 horsepower and 1018 Nm of torque. It’s brutally fast—and brutally controversial.

Ironically, AMG is already backing away from that setup, reportedly preparing a return to a six-cylinder engine for the next C 63. Audi, meanwhile, may be sliding into that power vacuum with a hybrid V6 that offers both drama and drivability.

The Weight Problem Nobody Wants to Talk About

Here’s the uncomfortable truth about plug-in hybrids: batteries are heavy. Very heavy.

BMW’s new M5 PHEV tips the scales at a staggering 2,445 kg, roughly 460 kg heavier than the outgoing model. That’s not just extra mass—it’s a handling nightmare waiting to happen.

Audi knows this. The RS5 has always been about precision and balance, not just straight-line muscle. Keeping the new RS5 from feeling like a rolling lithium-ion brick will be one of Audi Sport’s biggest engineering challenges.

If they get it right, the electric motor could actually improve handling by filling torque gaps and helping rotate the car out of corners. If they get it wrong, well… physics doesn’t care about marketing.

Looks: Loud, Wide, and Proud

Spy shots confirm what you’d expect from a modern RS car: subtlety has left the building.

The next RS5 will wear aggressively sculpted bumpers, flared fenders, and a fresh take on Audi’s signature oval exhaust outlets. It’s not pretending to be an A5 with better tires. This thing wants to be seen—and heard.

In a world where some performance cars try to blend in, the RS5 is leaning hard into its role as Audi’s street-legal track missile.

The new Audi RS5 isn’t just another evolution—it’s a philosophical shift. It’s Audi Sport admitting that the future of high performance is no longer purely mechanical, but electrical too.

If Audi can deliver the speed we expect without sacrificing the sharp, confident feel that made the RS5 great in the first place, this could be one of the most important RS cars ever built.

The RS5 is plugging in. Now we wait to see just how hard it hits.

Source: Audi

News

The new Porsche Cayenne Electric has entered production

By now, we’ve all heard the line: Porsche is going electric without losing its soul. But the new Cayenne Electric doesn’t just repeat that promise—it shows what it looks like when Stuttgart actually puts its money, its factories, and its engineering pride behind it.

The Cayenne Electric debuted in November 2025, and Porsche didn’t waste time turning press releases into reality. Production is already rolling in Bratislava, Slovakia, on the same flexible line that builds gasoline and hybrid Cayennes. That matters more than it sounds. It means Porsche isn’t hedging—it’s committing. Whether buyers want pistons, plug-ins, or pure electrons, Porsche can shift production on the fly.

But the real story here isn’t just that the Cayenne has gone electric. It’s how Porsche built it.

An Electric SUV with Supercar Muscle

Let’s get straight to the headline number: 850 kilowatts, or 1,156 horsepower, in the top-spec Cayenne Turbo. That makes it the most powerful production Porsche ever built—more than any 911, more than the Taycan Turbo GT, more than anything wearing a crest.

That figure alone tells you what Porsche is trying to do. This isn’t a polite family EV that happens to be fast. This is a Porsche first and an electric vehicle second.

Porsche isn’t publishing Nürburgring times yet, but let’s be clear: an all-wheel-drive electric SUV with this much output is going to bend physics, shred tires, and embarrass a long list of combustion-powered super SUVs.

A Battery Porsche Actually Owns

Most carmakers buy their batteries. Porsche decided that wasn’t good enough.

Instead, it developed its own battery modules in-house and built a dedicated factory—the Porsche Smart Battery Shop in Horná Streda, about 100 kilometers northeast of Bratislava—to make them. This facility handles everything from cell preparation to laser welding, foaming, cooling-plate integration, and end-of-line testing.

That matters because batteries are now what engines used to be. If you don’t control them, you don’t really control the car.

The Cayenne Electric uses a 113-kWh high-voltage battery built around large pouch cells for high energy density. Porsche claims more than 600 kilometers (370+ miles) of range, along with 800-volt fast charging. But the real engineering flex is the double-sided cooling system—cooling plates above and below the battery, a world first in a production vehicle. It keeps the pack in its ideal temperature window more consistently, which means more sustained performance, better charging, and longer life.

In Porsche-speak: fewer compromises.

A Factory Built for the Electric Age

The Cayenne Electric is born in a newly expanded platform hall at Volkswagen Group’s Bratislava site in Devínska Nová Ves. This is where the skateboard-style EV chassis takes shape before the body—side walls, roof, doors, hood, and tailgate—is added from one of Europe’s most modern press shops.

It’s almost fully automated, fast, and obsessively precise. And Porsche keeps its own engineers on site permanently through what it calls a “resident model”, making sure problems are solved in real time instead of disappearing into corporate email chains.

That’s how you launch a new generation of vehicles without the usual startup chaos.

A Porsche Interior That Finally Goes Full Digital

Inside, the Cayenne Electric goes harder into screens than any Porsche before it. It has the largest total display area the company has ever installed, paired with a faster, more responsive Porsche Communication Management (PCM) system.

More importantly, Porsche says this will be the most customizable Cayenne ever. Given how obsessed Cayenne buyers are with personalization, that could be as big a selling point as horsepower.

The Cayenne Electric isn’t just another electric SUV. It’s Porsche using its engineering culture to try to dominate the premium EV space the same way it once ruled sports sedans and performance SUVs.

With over 1,100 horsepower, a battery Porsche builds itself, a cutting-edge factory, and a platform designed for both volume and flexibility, this isn’t a compliance car. It’s a power move.

The Cayenne made Porsche rich. The Cayenne Electric might be what keeps it relevant.

Source: Porsche

NEW CARS

Capricorn 01 Zagato: The 900-HP Yellow Comet That Thinks It’s a Race Car

By the time most boutique hypercars have finished their first digital render, the Capricorn 01 Zagato has already built three working prototypes and shipped one of them across Europe. The latest version landed at the Retromobile show in Paris just months after the car’s first public appearance in Belgium, making one thing very clear: this isn’t a vaporware fantasy—it’s a functioning, fire-breathing machine.

The first Capricorn 01 appeared in classy Verde Knokke green over brown leather, a look that nodded politely toward Italian grand-tourer tradition. The Paris car, however, throws subtlety out the window. Finished in a vivid Giallo Sole yellow with blue suede inside, it looks less like a vintage Zagato tribute and more like something that escaped from a modern Le Mans paddock.

And that’s exactly the point.

Capricorn describes both versions as “engineering-driven vehicles,” which sounds like marketing fluff until you realize that they’re fully operational prototypes, not static show cars. Even more impressive, a third example is already being assembled at the company’s facility in Mönchengladbach, Germany. This is a startup acting like a serious manufacturer.

The Zagato influence is unmistakable. The trademark double-bubble roof arches over the cockpit, while almond-shaped headlights peer out from an aggressively sculpted nose. The body is packed with race-bred aerodynamic elements, including flying rear struts that recall the Ford GT, gullwing doors, a deeply channeled hood with twin exhaust outlets, and a full-width light bar across the rear. It looks dramatic because it is.

Inside, the Capricorn 01 rejects modern touchscreen minimalism in favor of something far more tactile. There’s a cluster of matching analog dials, a visible open-gate manual shifter, and a round steering wheel fitted with rotary controls. Blue suede, exposed carbon fiber, and modern racing buckets complete a cockpit that feels more like a homologation special than a luxury hypercar.

But the real story sits behind the seats.

The Capricorn 01 is built around a carbon-fiber monocoque and powered by a mid-mounted, supercharged 5.2-liter V8 sourced from Ford and heavily reworked. Output is claimed to exceed 900 metric horsepower and 1,000 Nm of torque—numbers that put it firmly in the upper reaches of the hypercar world.

That power goes only to the rear wheels through a five-speed manual transmission, which feels almost rebellious in a segment obsessed with dual-clutch gearboxes and all-wheel drive. With a curb weight under 1,200 kilograms, Capricorn claims a 0–100 km/h time under three seconds and a top speed of 360 km/h. Whether those figures survive independent testing remains to be seen, but the power-to-weight ratio suggests they’re not fantasy.

The first customer cars are scheduled for delivery later this year, and Capricorn says only a “minimum number” of the planned 19 units are still available, each priced at €2.95 million. That puts the 01 Zagato directly in the crosshairs of Ferrari, McLaren, Bugatti, Koenigsegg, and Pagani—names that usually don’t lose sleep over newcomers.

But Capricorn isn’t exactly new to the business of going fast. The company has supplied lightweight components to Porsche’s LMP1 program, Peugeot Sport’s Le Mans and Dakar racers, Mercedes, Lotus, and Caterham in Formula 1, and Volkswagen’s WRC effort. This may be their first road car, but they’ve been quietly shaping the racing world for years.

The Capricorn 01 Zagato doesn’t feel like a startup’s hopeful first step. It feels like a company finally deciding to put its name on something wild. And if the prototypes are any indication, the hypercar establishment just got a bright yellow new problem.

Source: Zagato