Preparing for the Shanghai Auto Show, Christian Segner, boss of Volkswagen’s EV project, told the press that VW has made “huge progress” in cutting production costs for electric cars. This cost-cutting will translate into four new affordable, zero-emission vehicles coming from Volkswagen. Segner was also a developer for the BMW i3, so he knows a thing or two about bringing futuristic electric cars into the real world.
Volkswagen is making a big EV push in an effort to recover from the Dieselgate disaster, where they got caught cheating on emissions testing. (If you eliminate emissions, you can’t cheat on emissions!) This news also comes in the wake of Volkswagen’s announcement it will invest $300 million in a network of charging stations in the US. Those stations will come in handy when these new EVs hit dealerships—which right now is slated for 2020.
The electric Volkswagens will be sold under the I.D. sub-brand, but it looks like they’ll still wear VW badges. The lineup will consist of two crossovers, a hatchback, and a sedan, with one of the crossovers being unveiled at Auto Shanghai. It’s called the I.D. Crozz, and it’s still very much a concept. It does, however, give us a good idea of where VW is headed with EVs, and the sense that they’re pretty serious about this plug-in effort. The figures we have right now are 302 horsepower, 80 percent charge in thirty minutes, and a range of 311 miles—better than the Tesla Model X.
If VW can execute as well as they’re hoping, it will be a boon for the effort to bringing EVs into the mainstream. We’re not close enough to production to know prices, but Volkswagen is stressing the affordability of I.D. Here’s hoping this new sub-brand finally produces a proper successor to the Microbus, like the I.D. Buzz we saw in Detroit.
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