No ID no entry
Volkswagen wants the world to forget about Dieselgate. We drive its EV apology
The Beetle and Golf… Volkswagen has been defined by these two massive hits. Now the company says this new electric car will be just as important. If things go to plan, the ID will reinvent Volkswagen itself. The ID is electric now, it’ll be autonomous later, and there will be dozens of cars on this one platform – a total of a million a year being churned out by 2025.
Yet even a step this big sounds like foot-dragging. This VW will be a decade behind the first Nissan Leaf. For most of that time, VW reckoned there wasn’t enough infrastructure to make electric cars a truly mainstream thing. So there wouldn’t be profit to justify investing in a specialist EV rather than the half-arse adapted e-Golf and e-Up.
Then the backstory took a massive jolt. Volkswagen’s criminal diesel misdeeds came to light, and new
“THE COMPANY HAD TO CHANGE ITS WAYS. THE ID STANDS AS ATONEMENT”
management and engineers took over. They were in any case more positive than the previous lot about electrification, but also they knew the company had to change its ways. The ID stands as atonement.
It has been developed at astonishing speed, considering it’s wholly new. One weekend in November 2015, just after Dieselgate broke, the board decided to build a new electric platform. At that point it was barely more than a doodle. They got a concept to the Paris show less than a year later. It was called ID, but they still won’t say if that’s the name for the production car. Two more years on, we’re in South Africa driving a prototype, and it goes on sale before the end of the year.
VW says this hatchback will cost the same as a diesel Golf with comparable equipment. Even from this prototype, it’s clear that in most significant ways it’ll be a nicer prospect than the Golf. It’s pushed along by a near-silent electric drivetrain, and it’s got the potential to be more fun because it’s RWD. Its body is strikingly progressive and pretty. The ultra-modern cabin is airy and much roomier than a Golf’s. The base version will have a WLTP range of over 206 miles, and there will be the option for 310-plus miles.
I poked around the disguise, and it’s spookily faithful to the concept. The same one-box shape, laid-back windscreen pushed forward over a short, nosey bonnet, dipping waistline, blacked-out tailgate. Big wheels pushed right to the corners. But no pillar-free sliding doors, obvs.
The cabin isn’t very concept-car. It is, if you want a three-word elevator pitch, very BMW i3. Two screens, few buttons, lots of multifunction touch-interfaces, the dash pushed away from you because there’s no engine to work around. The optional head-up display is colossal, because it’ll superimpose augmentedreality visuals onto the traffic and road ahead, making it easier to make sense of the online driver-assist and navigation.
We’re away. Any tickle of your right foot gets torquey, quick-witted and silent action. Because that’s how electric cars are. The prototype makes a little jolt as you move away from rest, but fully developed production software should sort that.
They’re schtum on performance and power output numbers, but don’t deny hints of about 180bhp, and it feels like 8-point-something to 62mph. Performance that’s always available right now, with no need to wait for boost or downshifts. Top speed will be limited to 100mph, because big cruising speeds deplete the battery alarmingly quickly.
As you’d expect from an advanced EV, most braking is done by regeneration, the system only calling up the discs for big-force slowdowns. You can choose either to start braking by lifting the accelerator, or with the first touch of the brake itself.
It corners without much roll, staying flat and composed. The driven rear wheels give it loads of traction to scoot out of roundabouts and tight corners. But chassis tuning is still on the to-do list, and over big bumps the prototype is underdamped, and the steering is as light and feel-less as a video game. Sitting alongside me is VW’s R&D director Frank Welsch. He has big hopes for how the steering will end up, which makes sense as a rear-drive car puts up no torque-steer.
Minus an engine, you’re prone to noticing other noises in an electric car. They’re doing well with suppressing suspension thump and wind noise, but there’s still work to be done on tyre hum. The whole body structure feels very solid and reassuring. Like a VW.
The body is mostly nothing more exotic than steel. Steel is cheap, and cheap really matters here. Welsch says weight isn’t the be-all and endall in EV range because energy lost in acceleration is mostly gained in regeneration when you slow down. More than weight, aero drag matters. This is visibly a slippery shape; it’s smooth underneath too and has flatfaced wheels. It’s also critical the electronics and the battery don’t waste energy through heat. So VW found a cell design with low internal resistance so the battery doesn’t warm up much during driving. The battery is liquid-cooled so it can accept rapid charging without damage – 125kW via its DC port. By 2020, charging posts that powerful look like being fairly common in the UK. Using one of those, 30 minutes will take it from zero to 80 per cent, or 250 miles’ range. But who runs down to zero? So you’ll almost certainly be on your way sooner than half an hour. For plugging in at home or work, there’s an 11kW on-board AC charger, which is quicker than most.
The pressure on this car could hardly be more intense. In 2020, the first buyers get their IDs, and later the same year a crossover launches. By 2022 there will also be a big saloon and the microbus. Those four have all been previewed by concepts. They are called, because someone’s Z-key is sticky, ID, ID Crozz, ID Vizzion and ID Buzz.
In all, there’ll be 27 models based on this MEB platform by the same year, 2022. They’ll be VWs, Audis, Skodas and Seats, with RWD and AWD, hatches and crossovers and saloons and vans.
Sure, VW will carry on making combustion cars for years, if not decades. It kept building rear-engined Beetles up to 2003. But few rational people wanted one after the Golf launched in 1974.