Volkswagen teases electric city car. Subscribe to Electric Vehicle News Bitesize Podcast for FREE!

Volkswagen will build a new electric car smaller than the ID3 in 2025. It will share parts with two other new electric cars from Skoda and Cupra and should cost less than £30,000.

The Volkswagen Group (which also owns Skoda, Seat and Audi) has teased the design of a new compact electric Volkswagen. This new model could come with an ID1 badge when it goes on sale in 2025.

The new car will share many mechanical parts with the new Cupra and Skoda electric cars, and will replace the now-sold-out Volkswagen e-Up as a rival to the electric Fiat 500 and MINI Electric.

Volkswagen’s new teaser images don’t reveal much about the new car, but you can easily spot some similarities with the larger Golf-sized ID3 Electric Vehicle.

For example, the central light bar across the VW badge looks identical to VW’s current small electric car, although in the new sketch the car has more pointed headlights and a more pronounced crease down the side of the rear wheels.

It’s unclear if the new car will have front and rear doors, but you’ll get a clue if you check out the teaser images Volkswagen has also shared for two upcoming electric cars, the Skoda and Cupra.

Both the Skoda and the new Cupra appear to have four-door boxy body styles.

This follows Volkswagen’s recent trend of ditching the sportier three-door hatchback in favour of a more practical four-door. For example, you can no longer buy a new three-door Golf.

The cabin of Volkswagen’s new small city car can take inspiration from today’s ID3 and ID4 electric cars, or borrow the ID Life concept for a little inspiration.

Volkswagen’s future compact Electric Vehicles are unlikely to borrow the ID Life’s electric motor. It has 234 horsepower, about 30 more than the Ford Fiesta ST Hot Hatch. In the cute little city express, that might be a bit excessive…

The Volkswagen city runabout of the future could complement the ID3’s 145 hp entry-level motor.

Volkswagen’s future electric city cars are likely to use a new type of battery that Volkswagen calls “unified cells.” These promise to help reduce battery costs, especially in small, inexpensive cars, by about 50 percent.

The new car’s battery performance is likely to be close to the 58kWh you get in the entry-level ID3 today. They have a claimed range of around 217 miles, but a future ID1 will be smaller, possibly lighter, and help it go further on a single charge.

With a top-of-the-line 42kWh battery, it easily surpasses the 199-mile range of the Fiat 500e.

VW has yet to confirm the name of the new car, but has announced that production will begin in 2025 alongside new electric cars from Skoda and Cupra.

Being the entry point into Volkswagen’s range of electric cars (currently including the ID3, ID4 and ID5, with more coming soon) means the new car will be the cheapest. Expect to pay less than £30,000 when the car comes out in a few years.

The first time Volkswagen teases an electric city car was at the Munich Autoshow in 2021.

Compared to the rear-wheel-drive SUVs ID3 and ID4, the concept was front-wheel drive. Equipped with a 57kWh battery and 124kW electric motor, the ID Life was designed to accelerate from 0 to 62 miles per hour in just 6.9 seconds and have a range of 248 miles.

The interior of the ID Life featured some ideas that were not as production ready, such as the Tesla-style airplane steering wheel. Other parts of the interior, such as the Honda E-like design, were rumoured to make it to production in 2025.

CEO Ralf Brandstätter said, ‘The ID Life is our vision of next-generation fully electric urban mobility. The concept car provides a preview of an ID model in the small car segment that we will be launching in 2025, priced at around 20,000 euros. This means we are making electric mobility accessible to even more people.’

The ID Life, like the Honda E, had an interior that is clean and open, and provided a 230V plug for passengers. The VW added a foldable front seat bench, which would probably not make it to the car in 2025 either.

By 2030, Volkswagen teases that it wants 70% of all vehicles sold in the EU to be electric, and this reasonable price can do just that.

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