CarBrandLogos archive · Volkswagen · 2020

VolkswagenID.4

Volkswagen's electric volume play, built on three continents.

Photo: LuvsMG481 · CC BY-SA 4.0

The story

A defining chapter in Volkswagen history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Volkswagen ID.4, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

After the diesel emissions scandal, Volkswagen committed to electrification on a scale no other established manufacturer attempted at once, and the MEB platform was the engineering answer. The ID.4, launched in 2020, was the model intended to carry that investment into volume: a compact crossover, the body style with the widest global appeal, rather than the hatchback the ID.3 had started with.

Volkswagen ID.4 CROZZ · Martininhe · CC BY-SA 4.0

Design and engineering

The layout was a deliberate return to Volkswagen practice — a motor on the rear axle driving the rear wheels, with a second motor at the front for the all-wheel-drive versions — and the flat battery under the floor gave interior space well beyond the car's footprint. It was named World Car of the Year in 2021 and built in Zwickau, converted from Golf production, as well as Emden, Chattanooga and China, making it one of the few genuinely global electric cars of its generation.

Volkswagen ID.4 X 005 · Jengtingchen · CC BY-SA 4.0

In production

The weakness was software. Early cars shipped with infotainment that was slow and unreliable, and capacitive controls that were widely disliked, which Volkswagen spent several years reworking through updates and a facelift that restored physical switches. The hardware was never the problem; the company's difficulty in becoming a software organisation was, and the ID.4 is where that became publicly obvious.

VW ID4 Family Innen · Thomas doerfer · CC BY-SA 4.0

At a glance

The facts that define it.

Produced

2020–present

Body

5-door SUV

Technical specification

The ID.4, in detail.

Production: 2020–present
Class: Compact crossover SUV (C)
Body style: 5-door SUV (ID.4); 5-door coupe SUV (ID.5)
Layout: Rear-motor, rear-wheel-drive; Dual-motor, all-wheel-drive
Designer: Klaus Bischoff and Felipe Montoya Bueloni
Assembly: Germany: Zwickau (Volkswagen Zwickau-Mosel Plant; Zwickau-Mosel Plant); Emden ; United States: Chattanooga, Tennessee (Volkswagen Chattanooga Assembly Plant; Chattanooga Assembly Plant) ; China: Anting (SAIC-VW, ID.4 X);
Manufacturer: Volkswagen