Audi has done something nobody saw coming a couple of years ago. The new RS 5 arrives in Europe at the end of June — the configurator is already live, orders are being taken. But the real intrigue isn’t the sales date.
It’s what’s under the hood. The new RS 5 is the first Audi Sport RS-series car to come with a plug-in hybrid drive. The Power PHEV setup combines a twin-turbo V6 and an electric motor. In other words, the legendary RS badge has finally been plugged into the wall — and the V6 stays.
Engine development happened at two sites at once. The Audi team in Neckarsulm was in charge of designing and validating the powertrain. Once the pre-production phase was wrapped up, the baton passed to Audi Hungaria in Győr — that’s where the engine is built in series and developed further.
Audi makes a point of it: this division of labor isn’t red tape, it’s a way to speed things up and avoid stepping on the same rakes twice. At every key milestone, the teams come together, work through bottlenecks, and hand the project over — with signatures and a paper trail.
The chassis got an upgrade too. The new RS 5 features quattro with Dynamic Torque Control — an electromechanical system that distributes torque between the rear wheels in real time, turning an ordinary corner into a precisely choreographed maneuver. Among the sports cars of 2026, the Audi RS 5 stands out for one simple reason: it refused to choose between a muscular V6 and the plug. It just took both.