Budget Volkswagen ID.1 to debut in September

The ink is still wet on the first deposit cheques for its ground-breaking, Golf-size VW ID.3 electric hatch, which won’t hit Europe until mid-2020 and Australia in 2022, but Volkswagen has now confirmed it will reveal a smaller, lower-priced, higher-volume EV for the masses in September.

Expected to wear an ID.1 badge when it reaches production in 2023 or ‘24, Volkswagen’s entry-level I.D. model will be the true EV successor to the Beetle’s ‘People’s car’ mantle, with target prices of less than €20,000 ($A32,000) in its German domestic market – before subsidies.

Volkswagen is planning to use the mammoth Frankfurt motor show as a showcase for its electric-car rollout, with the production ID.3 hatch and a concept version of the ID.1 budget car.

The latter will still use the Volkswagen Group’s MEB modular electric car architecture as the basis of its chassis, but it will be closer to Polo-size in its footprint and will run a host of price-slashing materials and battery ranges.

There are confirmed plans to turn the Kombi-chanelling I.D. Buzz people-mover, as well as the Crozz mid-size SUV, I.D. Roomz large SUV and I.D. Vizzion sedan concepts into production cars, but Volkswagen’s board member for sales and marketing, Jurgen Stackmann, has confirmed the company is also working on a “compact” model.

“The commitment is that we start in the compact class, and the cars coming next are compact class cars,” Stackmann said at an ID.3 event in Germany yesterday.

“Frankfurt will be the reveal of the [production] ID 3, and an idea of what’s coming next -- and that’s clearly compact, because that’s what Volkswagen does.

“In the long-term we clearly need to scale down and be more aggressive on prices. That will be a scale of industrialisation, and it will take some time until we bring it into classes,” he admitted.

It’s clear that Volkswagen is working to produce a third wave of mass-production step-change after the Beetle and the Golf, and it’s aiming at its ID.1 to do this even more than the ID.3.

Volkswagen’s product strategy boss Michael Jost insists the ID.1 (not its confirmed name) would be more of a crossover than a traditional car, and that Volkswagen was aiming for 2023, or “2024 at the latest”.

Its overall footprint is expected to be similar to the current MQB-based Volkswagen T-Roc small SUV, though its interior space will be greater.

While its price will be low, Volkswagen is aiming to replicate the class-crossing appeal of the Golf and the Beetle, which would necessitate a bit more design cheerfulness than the brand has shown lately.

Even Volkswagen Group chief Dr Herbert Diess admitted the namesake company was developing a Model 3-size electric car at half the price of the Tesla entry model.

It is planned to be a front-wheel drive model, with just one electric motor mounted at the front of the car and enough battery capacity to give it around 300km of electric range.

The relatively simple nature of its powertrain will be offset by planned high levels of connectivity and next-generation driver-assistance systems.

The VW ID.1 will be built at Volkswagen’s huge Emden plant in Germany, which has capacity of 300,000 Passats and Arteons a year, though that could increase through building the simpler EV architectures.

It won’t just be a Volkswagen, either, with planned Audi, Seat and Skoda versions in the pipeline, according to senior sources, with a target of 27 MEB-based EVs across the Group within six years.