New Audi RS7 spotted: performance estate car expected to retain V8 engine

• New Audi RS7 coming next year
• Spotted testing in modified A6 body
• Standard A7 Avant spotted testing
• RS7 expected to keep V8 engine
• Will be a plug-in hybrid
• Could share parts with the Porsche Cayenne

Audi has started testing the next generation version of the RS7 – but it won’t just be the traditional replacement for the swoopy premium coupe. This car will be the RS6 replacement too.

From these shots of the testing mule, you can see the next-gen car will be a plug-in hybrid, while the next RS6-badged car will be all-electric – inline with Audi’s new naming strategy.

All the even-numbered cars will be electric, and all the odd-numbered cars will have an internal combustion engine.

With both the new Mercedes-AMG E63 and BMW M5 on the way in the next couple of years, Audi needs to be on top of its game with this luxury performance car.

New Audi RS7 design

What you can’t really tell from these shots is how the next RS7 will look. This is a modified A6 body, but you can tell it’s got sporty underpinnings thanks to some obvious signs.

There’s cut outs for the dual oval exhausts on the rear bumper, along with chunkier wheelarches to house the larger wheels.

The standard Audi A7 Avant has been spotted testing though, and this gives you a much better picture of what the RS7 Avant will look like. The design up front is pretty similar to today’s A6, although the grille is a bit wider and there are some sleek new headlights.

The rear end appears to have had a more significant makeover. You can see the full-width light bar across the tailgate, with a slim LED strip hiding the indicators. The basic overall silhouette is just as sporty as the current A6 Avant’s though.

If you take this basic design and add some flared wheel arches and mroe agressive bumpers, you have a pretty good idea of what the hot RS7 Avant will look like.

New Audi RS7 engine

It’s not the most obvious thing to see with the camouflage, but you’ll be able to spot two filler caps – one either side. That’s the clear sign that the next RS7 will be a plug-in hybrid as one is for the fuel filler and the other is the electric charging point.

Many performance cars in the executive sector, such as the Mercedes-AMG C63 and the forthcoming BMW M5, are taking advantage of electric power to boost output but have some zero-emission driving to keep emissions down.

Audi could well be looking to Porsche for parts to make the new RS7 more powerful and more eco-friendly than it is now. The recently-revealed Porsche Panamera Turbo E-Hybrid uses a similar 4.0-litre twin-turbocharged V8 engine as the current Audi RS6 Avant, paired with an electric motor to make a combined 680hp and 930Nm of torque.

That’s a whopping 50hp more than the current RS6, and it should be pretty easy to transplant this system into the Audi A7 Avant seeing as it’s build using similar underpinnings to the Porsche. If this does turn out to be the case, you can expect the current 0-60mph sprint time to drop from 3.4 seconds to around 3.0 seconds.

How much will the new Audi RS7 cost?

Where you can expect Audi to certainly increase things is with the price. The current RS7 Performance starts from £116,305 – and that’s before the two higher-spec trims and options. The top-end Carbon Black version starts from £133,705.

So with hybrid power and improved performance, you can expect the next RS7 to start from upwards of £130,000 – a hefty amount of money to say the least. But when compared to a Porsche Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid (which costs from £145,900), it seems to be in the right area.

2024 is a busy year for Audi, with the new A6 and Q6 e-tron both making their debuts along with a host of other petrol-powered models. The A7 is likely to make an appearance towards the end of the year, with this RS7 coming in 2025.

Want to see how much you could save on the current Audi RS7 Performance? Check out the latest deals on it here, while you can see the best prices on other Audis here.