VW unveils details of its all-electric & autonomous ‘I.D. concept’ car w/ ‘over 250 miles range’, says it will arrive in 2020

For the past months, Volkswagen has been teasing its all-electric ‘I.D. concept’ ahead of the Paris Motors Show. First with a video teaser and followed by design sketches.

Now just a day before the press event in Paris, VW revealed the full design of the vehicle with a series of renders. It also released a few details and confirmed that they aim for a parallel production with the Golf in 2020.

It’s the same vehicle that VW announced would beat the Model 3 and X in electric range by misrepresenting the NEDC-rated range of the Model 3.

As previously reported, the new car will be built on VW’s new modular electrification kit (MEB) and it will be part of its plan to build 2 to 3 million all-electric cars a year and unveil 30 new models by 2025.

It will have a NEDC-rated range of “400 to 600 km” (~250 to 375 miles) depending on the battery pack configuration.

Here are the new renders released by VW today:

As previously stated, the vehicle is about ‘Golf-size’ and it will be produced side-by-side with its gas-powered counterpart. It’s not clear what will happen of the e-Golf.

The I.D. concept was described by VW as “the first Volkswagen in a completely new fleet of highly innovative electric vehicles.” It will be equipped with a fairly small electric motor with an output of 125 kW.

It will also feature a “fully automated mode” called “I.D. Pilot”. We noticed on the design sketches released earlier this week that the sensors on the vehicle looked a lot like the new Lidar sensors on the Faraday Future prototype:

The sensors on the new VW EV concept look remarkably similar to @FaradayFuture's new retractable lidar sensor packaging pic.twitter.com/Qm8Z0atIcT

— Fred Lambert (@FredericLambert) September 26, 2016

VW says that the steering wheel retracts into the dashboard when the “I.D. Pilot” is enabled. The German automaker hasn’t been talking a lot about its ambitions for self-driving cars, but it looks like we have a clear timeline now that the I.D. concept is set for a 2020 release.

While 2020 puts VW in the middle of the pack for self-driving cars, it places toward the end of it for a long-range relatively affordable electric car. We will have to wait and see what the next generation  e-Golf will have to offer in term of range.

Update: The unveiled the car concept moments ago:

https://youtu.be/iErN6gh3veU