German car maker Volkswagen is working on a small city car to join its all-electric ID series that would cost under €20,000 ($A36,000 at today’s rates).
The ID.1, as it would be called, would replace the 2020 e-Up!, and refer to the ID.3 in its design but with shorter overhangs and for easier urban driving.
It would also be available with two battery options. UK’s Car Magazine reports that these would most likely have 24kWh and 36kWh capacity, with the latter rumoured to offer nearly 300km driving range.
But it is the price, of course, that will make the most attractive proposition.
To get there, Volkswagen says it will strip down the MEB modular platform that underpins the ID.3 electric hatchback, and that a smaller version would also cost less.
It will also cost less to use the modular platform to underpin to new electric city car than its previous method of repurposing an existing internal engine vehicle to electric drivetrain, such as it did with the e-Up! and the e-Golf.
“In future, it will make no sense putting battery cells in a car designed for an engine as we have done with [2020’s updated] e-Up – that was a stepping-stone project,” Ralf Brandstätter told Car Magazine.
“We are working on a BEV below €20,000 (£17,600) – we can shrink the MEB architecture with less content to get the cost down.”
But there’s another elephant in the room with regards to electric vehicle cost, and that elephant is battery.
Word is that VW is also working on a new battery composition, and it says large-scale production of batteries could also see manufacturing costs drop significantly. In 2019, electric vehicle batteries accounted for about one-third of the total cost of making an electric car, according to Bloomberg.
The new battery, in which the percentage of nickel would raise from 65% to 80%, reduces the amount of cobalt needed from 15% to just 10%, Frank Blome, head of battery cells for VW, said on Tuesday as reported by Reuters.
While Volkswagen Australia has said it will be most likely the ID.4 electric SUV that would first come to Australia, the prospect of an electric vehicle that costs under $A40,000 would also be welcomed.
However, for a market like Australia, where big utes and SUVs are flavour of the day, the small footprint of the car may have limited appeal.
It also must be remembered that in Australia there would be the add-on costs of import and shipping, plus the inevitable currency conversion (that in today’s coronavirus-affected economic climate plummeted yesterday to an 18-year low).
Still, the tiny VW city car might be the perfect answer for many, keen to make the switch but without the budget to dig deep for higher end electric vehicles.
Bridie Schmidt is associate editor for The Driven, sister site of Renew Economy. She has been writing about electric vehicles since 2018, and has a keen interest in the role that zero-emissions transport has to play in sustainability. She has participated in podcasts such as Download This Show with Marc Fennell and Shirtloads of Science with Karl Kruszelnicki and is co-organiser of the Northern Rivers Electric Vehicle Forum. Bridie also owns a Tesla Model Y and has it available for hire on evee.com.au.