Volkswagen is preparing to unveil two more all-electric vehicles as part of its series of new I.D. concepts that will serve as the basis of its new electric car strategy.
They should be the third and fourth vehicles on the new platform and hit production in 2020-2021.
Since the Dieselgate scandal, Volkswagen has been trying to reinvent itself through a more aggressive electric vehicle strategy.
They are planning a $10 billion investment over the next 5 years in order to have 25 electric car models across all its brands on the market by 2025.
Audi has been leading the charge for the group and it has the two first vehicles planned for production, the e-tron quattro in 2018 and the e-tron Sportsback in 2019.
VW will be following with less expensive models – first with a Golf-size car that they hope will compete with Tesla’s Model 3 in 2019.
When Audi unveiled its e-tron Sportsback earlier this year, VW also unveiled its own new crossover all-electric I.D. Cross Concept similar to the Sportsback. The vehicle is expected to be the second all-electric vehicle to be launched as part of VW’s new electric car plans.
Now we learn of two more vehicles, I.D. Lounge and I.D. AEROe, through a slide from a VW presentation released by Autoblog.nl:
A fifth vehicle, the I.D. Buzz, a remake of VW’s iconic microbus, was already unveiled and the German automaker had already confirmed its plans to bring it to production on its new all-electric vehicle platform.
But the I.D. Lounge and I.D. AEROe are new to us. The former appears to be a larger SUV, likely a cheaper version of Audi e-tron quattro, like the I.D. Cross to Audi’s e-tron Sportsback, while the former, I.D. AEROe, is more difficult to size. Maybe a sports car or a performance sedan – hence the name?
Interestingly, the slide also shows the markets where they plan to make the vehicles available, which indicates that we might have to wait until 2020 to have a new electric car from VW in the US, while the I.D. and I.D. Cross would be for Europe and China.
It’s especially interesting considering the company has to spend billions in the US to build electric vehicle charging networks as part of its Dieselgate settlements. We recently reported on the plan for California, which includes installing ultra-fast 320 kW chargers, and the plan for the whole country, which includes a ‘nationwide 150 kW+ fast charging network’.
But the fuel consumption and zero-emission mandates in Europe and China are becoming stricter than the ones in the US, which could explain VW’s focus on those markets.
Volkswagen recently announced an updated joint-venture with JAC to produce 100,000 all-electric vehicles per year in China.
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