Inoffensive, well thought-out and easy to use. So, just like a Golf, but happens to be electric
Overview
Welcome to the first fruit borne by the Volkswagen ID tree. Before long, there’ll be a family of all-electric IDs: SUV-shaped ones, a saloon and at the heart of the range, this Golf-sized family hatch. The ID3 (they call it the ‘ID.3’, but it looks clumsy, so we’ll forget the decimal point) is a rival to the likes of the Nissan Leaf and BMW i3, but it’s also a crucial car for Volkswagen as it forges toward a new battery-powered era, seeking to clean up its oily reputation and silence the doubters who rage against the German giant for being too ponderous in taking electro-mobility seriously.
So, Volkswagen needs the ID3 to sell in vast numbers, not simply virtue-signal from the corner of the showroom. As a result, there’s very little going on here that’ll alarm or confuse the traditional Golf customer.
The ID3 is a five-door, five-seat hatchback, with a boot at the back and a motor beneath driving the rear wheels. The steering wheel and infotainment screen jump across from the latest Golf 8. Sure, you can jazz up the paintwork with some Nineties hues and polka-dot graphics, but the overall silhouette is a streamlined monobox, kinda like an overgrown Up that’s off to Bonneville speed week.
The overhangs are short, the wheelbase elongated, because the front doesn’t have to accommodate a hefty engine and cooling system. The long wheelbase is good news for packaging the battery downstairs, and humans above. And the drag factor is a svelte 0.27, even though it’s a tall machine with door mirrors, not new-fangled cameras. So you have a car that’s compact in the city for parking, but roomy enough for family trips. A definite plus.
Because the ID3 is based on a bespoke electric car-only platform (it’s codenamed MEB, and worth remembering as you’ll be hearing a lot more about cars spun off it in the coming years), VW can be agile when it comes to offering different versions. So, at the top of the range there’ll also be a 78kWh battery version good for a Tesla-troubling 341 miles of range.
Entry-level ID3s will offer just over 200 miles at best, via a 45kWh power pack. It’s rear-drive only for now – there’ll be an SUV-shaped ID4 along presently to fill the dual-motor niche – but it’s possible VW will add a twin-motor ID3 to the range later on, in the form of a an ‘ID3 R’, VW’s first electric hot hatch.
For now, we’ll concentrate on the version we’ve tested, which is the one that’ll arrive first in the UK this autumn: the ID3 1st Edition, logic fans. It houses a 58kWh battery, driving a rear-mounted electric motor providing an ample 201bhp and 184lb ft. More than you got from a Mk5 Golf GTI, that.
The WLTP claimed range is 260 miles, and it’ll accept charge at anything up to a 100kW rapid charger. It costs £35,880 after the government-funded (or should that be taxpayer-funded?) £3k grant is deducted, and it’s groaning with kit. Question is, will these early adopters be pleased with what they’ve stuck their neck out for? Most likely, yes – so long as you’re not hoping for anything truly radical.
Driving
The ID3 ‘feels’ rear-wheel drive. This is a surprise, and a pleasant one. On the way out of a roundabout, the car squats down and you sense the it’s being propelled from the rear, while the steering’s uncorrupted. It feels well-balanced, and though the slim (but 20-inch-tall) tyres chirrup with protest, there’s plenty of grip. Because the boxy ID3 is easy to place on the road and it’s responsive, it’ll be a good town car. Spot a gap, and have the confidence to go for it.
Against the clock, 0-62mph in 7.3 seconds and 99mph flat out don’t look exciting, but for your usual 0-30mph traffic light grands prix and keeping out of your own way on the town bypass, the ID3 is briskly fit for purpose. It’s not a drag-race hero type of EV. Try the old Carroll Shelby trick of betting your passengers they can’t reach a fiver stuck to the dash as you accelerate, and you’ll be destitute within the week.
But ask yourself, beyond the novelty of a ‘watch this’ show-your-mates moment, how much warp drive does a family hatch need? Of course, it’s quiet, seamless, and smooth. Even without an engine to mask, unwanted suspension clonks or wind rustle, the ID3 is a capsule of calm and serenity.
Drive is engaged via a very BMW i3-esque romboid selector that sprouts from the instrument display connected to the steering column. Twist forward for Drive or Brake mode, or backward for reverse. To make the ID3 feel uncomplicated, VW hasn’t bothered with paddleshifters for extra regen modes, or much of a ‘one-pedal’ sensation. However, the actual pads only ever meet the discs after the regen has harvested all it can, so even when you have to cop out and tread lightly on the brakes, the ID3 is doing its damndest to be efficient.
Even so, the pedal response is unreassuringly virtual. Given how pure, natural one-pedal driving in the likes of the i3 and Nissan’s Leaf quickly becomes, it’s surprising Volkswagen hasn’t featured it. Simplicity reigns.
You do get some driving modes, but the differences between Eco, Comfort and Sport are subtle. You’ll leave it in Comfort where the steering is lightly weighted but sharp enough, and you’ll marvel at the balletic turning circle that’ll get the ID3 facing back the way it came before a Golf driver has had chance to select reverse during their three-point turn. It’s all thanks to the rear-wheel drive layout allowing more steering angle to be packaged up front.
So far we’ve only driven the car in Germany, which is more flattering to a car with 20-inch rims and a 1,700kg kerbweight than our shoddy British surfaces. There’s little to suggest the ID3 is anything other than a comfortable rider. Crucially for an EV, the low-speed ride over speed humps and drain covers is damped just-so.
Could it have been lighter? Perhaps, but lighter cars take longer and cost more to engineer. And VW needs its electric halo-wearing car now, at a price that won’t make floating voters baulk…
Inside
If you’re reading this at BMW HQ, consider yourselves sincerely flattered. Your i3 may not have been the epoch-changing sales success the suits hoped for, but the cabin design clearly won a few fans over in Wolfsburg.
It’s not just the lofty driving position and airiness in here that’s cribbed from an i3: so’s the twin screen layout, and the drive selector behind the steering wheel. However, with its climate controls mostly hidden in the standard 10-inch touchscreen, the ID3 feels more minimalist inside. Great if you hate buttons. Not so clever if you value usability – but VW has a dodge for that.
You sit fairly high – closer to crossover altitude than a Golf’s seat – which carves out room for the low-slung batteries which give the ID3 that classic low centre of gravity behaviour. With the split A-pillars ahead of you and the steeply raked bonnet, it feels more MPV than SUV from inside, and pleasingly glassy. What’s good for visibility is also pleasing to passengers, and provokes more altruism from your driving, because you’re ‘on display’. Only the slim rear window and thick pillars out back hinder the ID3’s goldfish bowl experience.
The main touchscreen media centre with the touchy-feely heater and volume sliders on the shelf that juts out below, is lifted wholesale from the Golf Mk8. Or is it the other way around? Either way, this means you’re going to be a doing a lot of jabbing and swiping instead of prodding switchgear. And in the Golf, we’ve found that less than intuitive.
However, the ID3’s driving assistance systems are some of the best we’ve yet come across. Don’t mistake this for a self-driving car, because no such thing exists regardless of what Elon Musk or his Twitter army tells you. But the manner in which the ID3 steers itself is so well calibrated, it’s far less fraught operating the monitor in here than it is in the ID3’s internally-combusting cousin. The mirror controls, mounted on the driver’s door, are exceedingly fiddly, however, and worse than a Golf’s. Hope they don’t catch on.
Another piece of Volkswagen v2.0 heralded by the ID3 is the ‘ID’ light. What at first appears to be a gimmicky strip of Christmas tree lights wrapping around the cabin is in fact a sort of AI driver alert system. It’ll subtly gesture its firefly-esque glow in the direction the nav is pointing you, or flash red if you need to make a brake intervention. When charging up, it represents the battery level so it can be spotted at a distance, and it pulses as you converse with the ‘Hey ID’ voice assistant, which is VW’s shortcut for the missing tactile buttons. How very 2020. Or should that be Nineteen Eighty Four?
In the back, cinema-style seating (the row behind is higher up, there’s no sticky popcorn on the floor) offers a useful view ahead for rear passengers and there’s more space than a Golf, if not the Passat-sized accommodation VW claims. The door trims do look a tad cheap, but you’ll not want for stowage, as the flat floor has been filled with a generous central stowage bay with a phone holder, cupholders and a netted pocket up front.
All very useful, but you get the sense VW could’ve been braver with how it detailed this cabin. It hasn’t gone ‘full lounge’, like the Honda e, or really rammed how the open-space, flat-floor architecture like an i3. It feels very normal, played safe. It’s a bit of a chicken korma, y’know?
The boot’s as big as a Golf’s and there’s underfloor stowage for your mucky cable. No secret compartment under the bonnet though, as that’s full of air-con and head-up display gubbins – the ID3’s screen-projected info is extremely comprehensive. It’s a wonder the instrument screen wasn’t done away with altogether. The HUD isn’t part of UK 1st Edition spec, but will arrive on UK ID3s later on.
Owning
VW will offer 100kW charging capacity for ID3s, and it’s standard on the 1st Edition, This can add 180 miles of range in half an hour – if you can find an operational 100kW charger in the UK. On a UK-spec 7.4kW wallbox you’re looking at nine hours for a full charge, or around four hours for a nominal 100 miles.
We’ve been concentrating on the ID3 1st Edition, which uses the 58kWh battery. VW brands this as the ‘Pro’ battery. The 77kWh battery will be known as the ‘Pro S’. The 45kWh battery that comes later will be known as ‘Pure’. That’ll be less of a mouthful to explain than all those numbers. Future Pro models will be offered with a less punchy 144bhp motor and smaller wheels.
We can’t deliver the definitive verdict on range just yet, having only tested a 58kWh ID3 for a few hours in searing summer heat, with the local temperature north of 34 Celcius. With the full-length glass roof fitted, the air-conditioning had to run full blast just to keep the cabin atmosphere bearable. Good for avoiding heatstroke, but an utter range-killer.
Even so, our ID3 displayed a starting endurance of 220 miles versus 260 claimed, and consumed charge at a rate of 3.2 miles per kWh, giving a nominal range of 185 miles in ultra-hot weather, mainly on A-roads. With more urban use, a minimum of 200 miles between charges would be within reasonably easy reach.
Even so, given the ID3 is so versatile – spacious enough to be your everyday family car plus certainly refined and comfortable with it – you’ll be wanting more than just healthy inner-city range. A longer test beckons when we’ve got UK-spec ID3s on our hands soon.
Prices for the ID3 range line up with well-specced Golfs. They’re predicted to stretch from £29k for a base-spec car to £39k for a toppy Pro S ‘Max’ (the other trim levels are Life, Business, Family, Style and Tech, with an emphasis on easy speccing, with a basic and ‘Plus’ version of each level. Sounds complex now, but apparently the configurator will be a doddle to use.
The simple add-on packs that differentiate the trim lines make it easier for VW to focus production on the variants that are most popular, to reduce waiting times, which have been a real bugbear for EV adopters in recent years. Handy for wading through the resale market in years to come, too.
“A predictably sensible bespoke EV from Volkswagen, but a roundly competent one too”
VW makes no secret of the fact it considers the ID3 its next definitive people’s car, after the Beetle and the Golf. And to please most people most of the time, the ID3 is deliberately not an oddball. Digest its slabby-yet-slippery silhouette, get your head around the chunky drive selector, and the ID3 has few surprises left up its sleeve.
That, of course, is exactly the point. This car is supposed to grab the baton from the evergreen Golf, which has become the benchmark over almost 50 years of gradual improvement and evolution. Scary cars tend not to sell in big enough numbers to change the world.
That’s not to say the ID3 isn’t clever. It’s space efficient, nimble on its toes and tech-wise, it’s on the ball. What’s arguably more impressive than the car itself is the engineering might behind it, tooling up for huge volumes of production, a trim level for everyone, and soon, an ID model for everyone too. Even the factory that builds the ID3 is apparently carbon-neutral.
On first impression, the ID3 fills the EV family hatch chasm between the bravely brilliant BMW i3 and the disappointingly unambitious Nissan Leaf. After all, regular Golfs have never been thrillers packed with derring-do, but they’ve tended to be a yardstick against which the pretenders are judged.
In topgear.com/car-reviews/volkswagen/id3
Best view i have ever seen !