ICE vs EV

A frozen lake. All-wheel-drive. A combustion engined sports car alongside a performance electric. What’s faster? Crucially, what’s more fun?

- Anand Mohan

Driving on ice is the most fun you can have with your clothes on. The Ice Driving Experience, first introduced by Audi nearly a decade ago, encourage us to switch off ESP and experience the car’s inherent dynamics and our wheelsmanship limitations. No safety net and no electronics; it’s just the natural balance of the car exploited by your throttle and steering control to perform a beautiful ballet on a frozen lake. Throwing a car sideways on ice, full opposite lock, hard on the gas, a rooster trail of snow chasing you, and with nothing to hit save for the snow banks… this is incredibly addictive.

On one side of the lake we have a fleet of six RS e-tron GTs sitting silently and caked with snow, while on the other is a fleet of dino-juice sipping RS 5 Coupes, turbo-V6 motors burbling away. Which is faster is what we will discover over the next two days — and also how sending an EV sideways is different compared to an ICE.

We start with the basics. Braking, car control and understanding understeer and oversteer.

In understeer you’re a passenger. The car has lost front-end grip and the nose is pushing wide. The key is to slow the car down but gently, going easy on both brake and throttle, or it will upset the car’s balance. Simultaneously unwind steering lock because the straighter your tyres are the more traction they can provide.