The Volkswagen Group is getting serious about cheaper EVs, first with a small hatchback dubbed ID 2 that we’re promised will be sub-€25,000 (£22,000) when it arrives in 2025, then with an even cheaper car costing less than €20,000 (£17,500).
“That is the real Champions League,” Volkswagen brand boss Thomas Schäfer said of the entry EV at a recent event to unveil the ID 2all concept that previews the Polo-size electric hatchback. “We have to make a car that is affordable and entry.” The timescale for that car, he said, was between 2026 and 2027.
But how can the VW Group hope to sell a car as cheap as an entry-level ICE supermini when the battery costs are as high as they are?
Before it can, VW has fit together a giant jigsaw puzzle that links a battery supply chain, production scale, a cheap platform and a high-tech factory.
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“To get a car below €25,000 that has no compromises with safety and range is literally impossible at the moment,” Schäfer said. Right now, the Volkswagen e-Up city car costs from €29,995 (£26,000) in Germany yet has a range of just 159 miles. Clearly, VW has to improve on that, first with the €25,000 ID 2 and then with the model potentially called the ID 1, expected to replace the e-Up.
The €25,000 car is the easier target, and VW is well on its way to making that happen. It will use a cheaper version of the MEB platform, switched from rear-wheel-drive to front-wheel-drive and called MEB Entry.
The scale effect (building enough of them to drive down costs of parts, labour etc) is taken care of by the fact that the ID 2 will be built alongside the similar Cupra Urban Rebel at the Seat plant in Martorell, Spain, while a second related pair of models for VW and Skoda will also be built in Spain at VW’s Pamplona factory (home of the Polo).
With both lines planned for 150,000 vehicles each, that’s 300,000 capacity annually for cars with very similar underpinnings. Although they will look outwardly different at launch, 50% of the parts will be shared between models, VW’s head of manufacturing, Christian Vollmer told Autocar Business. “With the high scaling effect of those four cars, we will bring down the cost to less than €25,000,” he said.
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