One of the many things that COVID-19 has laughed at were our plans to try out Volkswagen’s all-new electric car platform. If the virus hadn’t come along to wreck everyone’s year, we’d already have spent a few miles getting to know the ID.3, the first in a series of battery electric vehicles which will all use VW’s new MEB (Modularer E-Antriebs-Baukasten, or Modular Electrification Toolkit) architecture.

But the virus did happen, and Europe its borders shut to inhabitants of Plaguesville, USA. So we’ll have to rely on third-party reports of this new electric people’s car, a model that had been stuck in software development quicksand but which is now about to begin customer deliveries in Europe. 

Reports come from people like Jonny Smith, who got to spend a couple of hours with a production ID.3 in and around VW’s home town of Wolfsburg. Smith got to try out the “first edition” of the ID.3, which uses the midsize 56kWh battery pack to achieve a WLTP-rated range of 260 miles (418km):

With 150kW (201hp) and 310Nm (228lb-ft) and a curb weight of 3,500lbs (1,600kg) the ID.3 is not exactly performance-focused, and a 0-62mph (0-100km/h) time of 7.3 seconds is not going to trouble a GTI away from the traffic lights. Instead, Smith finds a car in keeping with the spirit of VW’s previous mass market models, the Beetle (population 22 million) and the Golf (population 35 million). Which makes sense—VW promises its going to churn out millions of IDs over the next few years.

It’s both shorter and narrower than the new Mk8 Golf. But MEB’s packaging makes for a vehicle with more room on the inside for humans and their stuff, riding atop a skateboard made from lithium-ion cells. The controls are pretty minimalist—the BMW i3-inspired drive selector pokes out of the side of the main instrument display, just as it did for the (also MEB-based) ID.Buggy we drove last year. The “play” and “pause” symbols also carried over from the concept to the ID.3—expect those to show up in the other production ID cars.

The first one we’ll see here in the US is the ID.4 crossover, which VW says is still going on sale here by the end of 2020. Initially, ID.4s will be imported from Germany, but in 2022, local production begins at VW’s factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1699467