Following the recent announcement from Volkswagen about its new ID.2all concept, the company has confirmed that will also launch an even smaller car, roughly the size of a VW Polo, that will likely become the brand’s ID.1. According to Autocar, it will be built on a new electric platform developed by Volkswagen Group in conjunction with its Skoda brand
The aim is to deliver a sub £17,000 electric car but Thomas Schäfer, Volkswagen CEO, has said that this will be a challenge. This is an attractive price point and one that I believe will start to help with the mass adoption of electric vehicles. Don’t get too excited yet because the car is not expected to launch until 2027.
Thomas Schäfer, Volkswagen CEO, said: “We’re also working on a vehicle below €20,000 that will be even a bigger challenge. It’s part of our DNA where Volkswagen has also a commitment that we all have to embrace and we’re working on at full steam ahead. In the next couple of months, we will be reporting on this.”
As mentioned, the new smaller and most affordable electric car from Volkswagen is expected to be a similar size to the Polo which I think is a good thing. There have been hints that it may take the name, potentially becoming the ID. Polo. This would help make it familiar as well as affordable to a wide audience who already know the Polo.
Schäfer added: “The Polo is very successful and one of our icons, and we’re going to use that vehicle concept in the future as well. Whether we use the same name of the vehicle we don’t know yet. We’re currently working on those iconic names into the future to make sense of the product line-up.”
Hopefully, this sub £17,000 model from VW comes to fruition because this will help dispel the myth of electric cars all being expensive and help to speed up the transition to electric vehicles. Hopefully, it will also ignite the switch with other large original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to follow suit and make electric motoring affordable for all.