► VW’s first bespoke electric car tested
► Golf-sized hatch, priced from £36,195
► Supply and choice currently very limited
The Volkswagen ID.3 is the start of a new era at VW. The firm’s first electric car built on the dedicated MEB electric vehicle platform, it sits alongside the Volkswagen Golf as an alternative to conventional internal combustion power. It has a sleek but instantly recognisable design, compounded by a futuristic interior that some love and others despise, and plenty of performance – in terms of both speed and driving range.
Subsequent to the ID.3’s launch in 2020, the same underlying technology has spawned a whole family of electric Volkswagens – including the VW ID.4 and VW ID.5 SUV models and the funky ID. Buzz people carrier and ID. Buzz Cargo van – as well as the fundamentally similar Cupra Born and various other VW Group models, such as the Skoda Enyaq.
As the trailblazer, the ID.3 hasn’t had the smoothest start in life. It’s been plagued with software problems, the infotainment system is sometimes infuriating, supply chain issues have disrupted production, and the CEO responsible for bringing it to market has now left the company.
The disruption doesn’t seem to be over yet, either, as if you go to the VW customer website you’ll find just one version available, the 201bhp Life Pro Performance with 58kWh battery and 265-mile WLTP driving range. Has Volkswagen’s electric revolution stalled, or should we still be taking the ID.3 seriously?
Wasn’t the Volkswagen ID.3 supposed to be the new Golf?
The ID.3 is slightly wider and slightly taller than the latest version of VW’s sector-defining hatchback, though not quite as long. It does basically the same job, only electric, and with an interior that some might argue looks as if it’s escaped from the set of 1990s sci-fi TV show.
You’d probably be right to point out that it offers nothing like the breadth and depth of trim levels and specification that the Golf does. But the picture isn’t quite as simple as the one currently painted (pixelated?) by the Volkswagen customer website.
For while only one version is being advertised as available on there, the VW press office insists that buyers after alternative specifications – including the larger 77kWh battery pack, which claims up to 340 miles of WLTP driving range – can still order them via the real-world dealer network. The more desperate online situation is said to be a way of managing expectation and demand as supply chain issues remains ongoing.
Similarly, customers with existing orders are not being told their preferred model is no longer available.
Is the VW ID.3’s interior really that much of a departure?
The Golf Mk8 had already gone touchscreen heavy before the ID.3 came along. But getting into this EV and adjusting the steering column – only to discover the compact digital instrument cluster moves with it, rather than being fixed to the dashboard – may cause you to think this is the future of personal transport promised by Hollywood for years.
Other cars have done this moving cluster trick, of course. But not in such a minimalist fashion, and not with the gear selector attached to said cluster as a chunky nodule on the side. What’s more, like a Tesla or a Polestar 2, you never have to actually do anything to start the ID.3 – as soon as you sit in the driver’s seat the infotainment comes to life and the novel ID Light that spans the width of the lower windscreen illuminates itself in greeting.
Seatbelt on, all you have to do next is twist the gear protrusion (presumably trying to ignore the slightly poor fit of the plastic if you’ve actually bought the car) to engage Drive, and off you jolly well go. There’s no handbrake of any description, just a button for Park that sorts everything out for you.
When you arrive at your destination – probably much more quickly than you were expecting – you hit P and get out. The ID.3 switches itself off when you exit the seat, and you walk away; if the full keyless package is fitted you won’t even have to lock it. Somehow it feels less like a car than a service, but we don’t mean that in a bad way.
What’s the build quality like?
The interior design features big slabs of soft-touch colour on the door panels and dash. A central 10.0-inch screen that’s angled towards the driver has inhaled most of the secondary controls. At a glance it may hit all the right emotional buttons as a fresh yet functional piece of visual theatre, but upon pressing some of the few physical buttons that remain you may find the depth-of-quality perception turns out to be an illusion.
Like stabbing a mirror with a finger only to discover it was stilled water, some of the plastics Volkswagen has chosen for its ID models aren’t as nice as they appear. This is sort of okay in the ID.3 (although the Cupra Born now puts it to shame), but becomes less so as you move into the bigger and more expensive ID.4 and ID.5 models. We’d gladly trade the ‘play’ and ‘pause’ symbols on the metal pedal surfaces for a little more tangible quality here.
However, perhaps more importantly, the ID.3 is seriously spacious inside. The lengthy wheelbase, cab-forward windscreen and higher roofline make for lots of leg- and headroom, while the 385-litre boot is five litres bigger than a Golf’s, despite having an electric motor attached to the rear axle under there somewhere.
The seating position is a little raised up, and so too is the floor – but since this is due to the battery pack beneath you don’t notice this too much in the corners. The centre of gravity is that much lower than ‘normal’ for the same reasons.
What about the ID.3’s notorious infotainment issues?
The 10.0-inch central touchscreen takes only a modest amount of figuring out, fortunately, as it’s inhaled most of the secondary controls. This has some clever shortcuts for ventilation options, and makes a substantial amount of customisation available to the driver. Although initially laggy, this has improved over time.
But the ‘Hello ID’ voice control still isn’t overly impressive; even after various over-the-air software updates, customer cars still struggle to understand basic instructions and remain immune to UK postcodes.
Similarly. the unnecessarily finickity touch-sensitive panels that control many of the other features – such as the lights – continue to feel like a backwards step compared to the sensible clarity we used to get inside Volkswagens. While these may have lacked the visual theatre that future-gazing EV design tends to inspire, they did a much better job of their fundamental purpose, such as switching on the foglights at the first try.
Some of the ergonomics are weird, too. That lighting panel is an uncomfortable stretch away, the controls on the steering wheel are verging on nasty, and there are no separate switches for the rear electric windows in the front. Instead, a button behind allows the front controls to operate the rears.
Fortunately, the ID.3 wins back some lost points with the driving experience.
What’s the Volkswagen ID.3 like to drive
With very little front and rear overhang and a 201bhp electric motor attached to the rear axle, giving the car 50:50 weight distribution and freeing up the front wheels to concentrate on steering, Volkswagen has created an electric car that’s a lot more entertaining than you’d expect for something that’s essentially a family runabout.
Some critics will complain that it’s not deeply involving – the steering, while convincingly weighted, is a little numb, as if it’s been experimenting with Novocain. But regardless of battery pack size, this is a fast, compact car that is happy to get stuck into a set of corners.
The Pro Performance best 0-62mph time of 7.3sec doesn’t really do the acceleration justice. It’s not ludicrously quick like a Tesla, but it deploys the 229lb ft instantly available with an insistent shove that for some reason puts us in mind of a speeding freight train forcing its way through a giant marshmallow. Traction is excellent, even in greasy conditions.
There’s no sudden impact of walloping thrust here, but a sort of relentless on-rushing that, in combination with a single-speed transmission that never needs to pause for breath, means you sometimes find yourself quite out of step with how fast you thought you were going. So it’s maybe good news that the ID.3 is electronically limited to 99mph.
It rides remarkably well for something on rubber-band-shod 19-inch wheels, only occasionally clattering into particularly bad surface intrusions. Weighing upwards of 1700kg probably helps smooth things out, a heft you can feel in the lateral chop that emerges during harder cornering. Yet there is an underlying pliancy here, and despite the numbness, the steering is deft, with a lightness of touch that belies that Heffalump status (which to be fair, isn’t too bad for an EV).
At the moment, electric propulsion is still enough of a novelty that for many the ID.3’s driving experience will feel totally revolutionary – and really, it does handle undulating British B-roads very well. So although the ID.3 lacks a little character compared with some ICE alternatives, it’s still an appealing way to get around.
What about the ID.3’s driving range?
Given the pace of electric vehicle development, it was no surprise at launch that the ID.3 knocked the spots off equivalent rivals when it came to official electric car driving range. In big-battery Tour specification, the 340-mile WLTP rating slotted between the single-motor Tesla Model 3 (305 miles) and the Model 3 Long Range (374 miles).
Now that capability – and beyond – is much more widely available, not least from the near-identical Cupra Born.
In real-world terms, we have plenty of ID.3 experience testing the 58kWh and 77kWh battery packs in combination with the 201bhp Pro Performance motor set-up. With the smaller battery, we’ve found 190 miles max to be the more likely scenario, while the bigger battery can comfortably manage 280.
Those are substantial shortfallings over the official ratings, but once out on the road we’ve found not even a seriously sustained amount of committed cross-country driving generated the slightest twitch of range anxiety. The miles fall steadily, not in terrifying chunks, making your ability to cover distances predictable and unalarming.
Besides, with up to 100kW charging capability, the ID.3 can potentially add 200 miles of range in 30 minutes. The kind of wallbox you’re likely to have at home will need somewhat longer than that. But in those circumstances, if at all possible it makes sense to be routinely charging overnight when you can make best-use of the lowest-rate EV electricity tariffs (assuming the current energy crisis doesn’t wipe those out completely). Electric car charging costs can otherwise be very expensive.
In April 2021, VW added an ID.3 Pure Performance model, with a less powerful 147bhp electric motor and smaller 45kWh battery. The official WLTP driving range for this version is 217 miles.
Volkswagen ID.3 verdict
Now the toppy 1st Editions is out of the way, ID.3 pricing has dropped considerably, even if availability is continuing to confuse matters. It’s still not cheap enough to fully excuse some of the basic plastics and odd ergonomics, but if you can get by with that and don’t mind the slightly numb steering – let alone the learning curve for the infotainment – then the Volkswagen ID.3 has wide-ranging appeal. Pun intended.
It is good to drive, ridiculously fast for something that isn’t supposed to be a performance car, roomy inside, and just brilliantly modern in a very satisfying, wholesome way. Once you’ve calibrated yourself to the touch-sensitive buttons and accepted the voice control being largely useless, the biggest issue for the ID.3 is the same as it is for every electric car – the continuingly frustrating public charging infrastructure. Get your head around that, however, as many electric car buyers are able to do, and the ID.3 is easy to live with. Much like the Volkswagen Golf.