VW ID.3: thousands of electric cars spotted being stockpiled in Germany

Volkswagen has been stockpiling VW ID.3, its new electric car, inventory as thousands of electric cars have been spotted in parking lots in Germany.

In November 2019, VW started production of their ID.3 electric car at its Zwickau factory, which they are completely converting from gasoline-powered car production to EV production.

However, VW said that ID.3 deliveries won’t start until summer 2020 as they accumulate vehicles until then.

At the time, it seemed like an unconventional way to launch a new vehicle, but we have since learned that the ID.3 might be facing some software problems preventing delivery.

Nextmove, an electric car subscription company in Germany, went on the hunt to find the ID.3s that VW produced over the last 5 months.

They managed to find to parking lots where they are storing about 2,000 VW ID.3 electric cars:

Volkswagen is reportedly reworking the software architecture of the ID.3, which is going to be the first VW vehicle capable of over-the-air software updates.

In the meantime, the German automaker is just making more vehicles and plans to deliver “30,000 ID.3 electric cars almost at once” when they start deliveries this summer.

Last year, a spokesperson said that VW is still “fully committed to the goal of producing and selling about 100,000 MEB vehicles in 2020” – and most of them are expected to be VW ID.3 vehicles.

The main specs of the ID.3 are battery pack options up to 77 kWh for 550 km (WLTP) of range, up to 125 kW charging, and a starting price under $33,000 (€30,000) for the base version.

You can read our post for the unveiling for the VW ID.3 last year for all the details.

Electrek’s Take

It’s a bummer that those electric cars are not on the road converting gas mileage to electric.

It shows that established automakers need to adapt to this new era of software in vehicles being of the most important feature, along with the expectation of updates.

There’s a clear contrast between VW’s approach and Tesla’s. For those who don’t remember, Tesla actually delivered the Model 3 with uncomplete software and kept updating it over the months after the first deliveries, but it never sat on inventories – partly because they couldn’t afford to.

I am sure VW can afford to sit on those cars for a few months, but I am sure that they would prefer to deliver them already. By this summer, they are going to have about $1 billion worth of undelivered ID.3.

What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below.