Volkswagen ID.3 plugged into needs of changing market

Volkswagen, whose past is intricately linked not only with the development of the car as an industrial and sociological force throughout the 20th century, but also with the soul of generations of people, who, like me,  have lived through nearly half that period, is more than just an auto-maker.

Having built two of the most important cars in history  — the Beetle and the Golf — Volkswagen has become ingrained in the lives of huges swathes of people, from brain surgeons and rocket scientists to hippies and alternative realists, and has kept them motoring happily in various derivatives of those machines.

From the 'bugs' to camper vans to family hatchbacks and their 'hot', sporty offspring, the Beetle and the Golf have combined sales of 53m units. Those two cars were the foundation stones in the development of Volkswagen, which is now the biggest car-maker in Europe and in the top three worldwide.

In a fast-changing industrial and environmental world — and in the wake of a badly damaging and costly scandal involving diesel emissions — Volkswagen has taken a huge, left-field jump into electrification.

This self-proclaimed 'third chapter' of the evolution of the  car giant — the Beetle having been the first chapter and the Golf the second — will build Volkswagen into what it hopes will be a new type of automotive powerhouse. That is, a powerhouse that has very few of its products equipped with an internal combustion engine.

Such an ambitious plan is not, of course, going to happen overnight, and for the last five years or so — since it was so badly shaken by the 'Dieselgate' scandal — Volswagen has been planning  for this.

Volkswagen will invest €33bn across the group, €11bn of which will be spent on developing product for the Volkswagen brand. Such significant investment will finance the manufacture of one million electric models by 2023. By 2025, it will be making 1.5m electric units annually.

These are fairly startling figures, but not necessarily a claim to doubt. A company this size doesn't make many outrageous promises and the emissions humiliation was a rare example of poor judgement.

You would have to be a sceptic to disbelieve that one of the powerhouses behind the development of the internal combustion engine, and as an essential piece of kit in society, is not capable of changing tack so quickly, and so propitiously, to electric. If Volkswagen say it's going to happen, it will happen.

That does not mean that those of us for whom high-octane fuel flows through our veins are entirely happy with such a prospect, but the way the world is going, politically and environmentally, it is easy to see why Volkswagen has chosen this path, and probably why so many other car manufacturers will follow.

The first card that Volkswagen will deal in the game of electrification is the ID.3 and it will herald a family of ID vehicles that will become the company’s staple. The SUV version of the car, the ID.4, has already debuted and will be with us shortly.

Right now, though, the ID.3 joins what can only be described as a lacklustre market of fully electric cars and, quite honestly, few of them are worth discussing. 

The majority, as we have often said in these columns, are overpriced and not useful for people who have to cover substantial daily distances.

In the super-mini segment, there are only two — and both of them are closely related —  that provide a range that is workable for anyone needing to regularly cover journeys over 200km. In the C-segment, other than the ID.3, there are, again, only two that are affordable and which provide a workable non-urban range. Both are Korean.

For an industry that prides itself on being as technologically up-to-date as the automotive sector does, this is telling. 'Great things will be coming soon' we are often promised vis-à-vis electrification. So far, there's little evidence of it.

The ID.3 itself is, seemingly, as good as it could be and that means it is powered by a rear-mounted electric motor, with a 58kWh battery pack. 

This translates into a power offering of 204bhp and a substantial 310Nm of torque, as well as a top speed of 160kph and a 7.3-second 0-100kph time.

Those are impressive performance figures and when tied into Volkswagen's claimed range of 418.4km on a full charge, you have a proper everyday car and not just one for tooling around town. 

Of course, like most motor companies' optimistic claims about fuel consumption, the range claims for electrics rarely match reality.

In this case, it is not too far off, however, and that means Volkswagen has already won not only the bragging rights in the growing electric C-segment market, but, also, they are being frank about their product’s capabilities.

A hard-working, 125km drive left us with some 150km in the 'tank' (sorry, battery). That drive involved a mix of motorway, main roads, and back-country B-roads, and indicated that someone with a lighter right shoe than I have should get around 360km.

It also indicated that more parsimonious drivers will be able to extract the full 400km from the battery and that's impressive. The kilometres fell away in slow, steady numbers, rather than in anxiety-inducing amounts, the further I drove.

I was impressed that I got as much as I did out of it, given the thrashing it got, but, as I was doing the thrashing on your behalf, dear reader, I was not only exploring the range, but also the handling.

The closest comparison to normal motoring is the Golf and it has always been a standard-bearer for ride and handling in mass-market cars. The ID.3 came close to matching that.

It was not as balanced as a Golf, but it was close, and the only times it lost its impressive composure were on badly cambered corners, or sections where you had to remember that the rear wheels were doing the driving, rather than the front ones, as per the Golf.

The interior (and the boot) is big and spacious — much more so than its vaunted sibling — and there was loads of storage space, too, as there are no internal combustion engine hindrances, such as a gearstick, etc. I did feel the décor to be too plastic, but it was functional.

The car has all the requisite technology and the two screens — one for the instrumentation, the other climate, connectivity, audio, and so forth. The instrumentation screen was usable, but the other not as intuitive as I thought it should be.

Finding out how to work things often meant delving into sub-menus, which was tiresome and not conducive to good driving.

The ID.3 is, without doubt, the flag-bearer of the new era of electrification, but, I must say, I was not as excited about it as I felt I should be. 

This is a very good electric car, but only that. At no time did it convince me it was going to be the third great chapter in a motoring heritage.

Better will come soon, no doubt.