Volkswagen’s plotting pure-electric sports car

The all-electric ID range at Volkswagen needs a figurehead, insiders insist, and that’s more likely to be a convertible sports car than emotive machines like the ID.Buggy or the ID. Buzz Kombi.

Sources suggest it is planning to combine its nameplates with and ID.R range of high-performance road cars, which could share their underpinnings with Audi.

Due in showrooms by 2025, the ID.R brand will deliver both coupe and convertible versions from the Volkswagen Group’s Modular Electric Matrix (MEB) electric-car platform.

The plausibility of the performance sub-brand had been internally investigated, based around the success of the GTi and R sub-brands in the rest of the Volkswagen range.

It will be powered by a new generation of battery chemistry, picked up by Volkswagen Motorsport as it developed the Pikes Peak and Goodwood hillclimb and Nurburgring EV lap record-breaking ID.R prototype.

The same team from the ID.R’s development program is now working on road cars for Volkswagen and they’re leaning towards a “cell-to-pack” system for both performance and packaging.

The MEB platform will be first not-seen beneath the ID.3 mass-market hatchback and offers a choice of front-, rear- or all-wheel drive. Or, if some strange need arises, even three-wheel drive.

Planned as a two-seater, the ID.R family would start life as a bi-motor all-wheel drive with a powertrain drawn directly from the upcoming ID.4 crossover.

The upside of this is that it may not stop there. Just as Audi’s TT and S3 models ride on Volkswagen’s Modular Transverse Matrix (MQB), a replacement for the design-driven TT could come from the ID.R.

It’s not the kind of thing Porsche is after, though, with its all-electric Boxster-style car set to adopt the Taycan’s more expensive, more focused PPE architecture.