The production version of the 2020 Volkswagen ID.3 electric hatchback was finally revealed earlier this week, and despite it having a 341-mile range and 200 hp powering the rear wheels, VW is already talking about tuning it out to be a full hot hatch. Hell yeah.
There’s just one problem—VW has no plans to sell the ID.3 hatch in America, so we probably won’t get any sort of performance version of it either. Lame!
Regardless, I’m still excited about the promises that leaked out of Jürgen Stackmann’s mouth, who is the head of sales for VW, to Autocar:
“Today, if you look at high performance and electric, it’s actually a huge compromise, and you pay the penalty with a small range.
“We should be able to deliver something meaningful in under five years but it takes a team of developers, and it’s tough without a lot of expertise at the moment. We have to start that journey.”
VW’s head of research and development, Frank Welsch, doubled down on the promise of a hot electric hatch, again from Autocar:
VW R&D chief Frank Welsch said that a performance ID 3 was one of his top priorities to optimise [sic] the ID 3 over the coming years. “We should have the same as cars such as the Golf, the GTI and R. People like performance and I’m sure people will love performance in ID cars too.”
He added: “The situation is different – even in the normal ID, we have good performance right from the very beginning, you just touch the pedal and you feel the punch. From 0-60km is like the GTI. No GTI is faster than the ID 3. At the upper end, of course GTI is better.”
[…]
Talking about requirements for an ID 3 R, he said: “We need four wheel drive and a performance e-motor. It won’t be called GTI, let’s see whether it’s R or something else.”
If we won’t be getting any of the three trims of the standard ID.3 hatch, I doubt we’ll be getting any sort of crazy performance version, either.
But there may yet be some good news for us Americans. We will be getting most of the hardware found in the ID.3 in different forms stateside eventually, first with the ID.4 crossover, so it’s very possible we’ll also benefit from a hot version of the ID.3 trickling over to our less cool, slightly more depressing VW EV lineup.
On top of all of that, the VW execs also mentioned to Autocar the possibility of a hybrid performance Tuareg as well. The only problem there is that VW pulled the Tuareg from the U.S. market, so I doubt we’ll get any performance variant here, either.
I want fast electrified Volkswagens and I want them now. Or in five years. I just want something interesting soon please.
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