VW ID. First Drive | Fully Charged

Hello and welcome to I think one of the most special episodes of Fully Charged we've ever made. What's behind me is the VW ID, doesn't it? It may have a different name when it comes out. This is an early working prototype of the car that's going to be hitting the streets in 2020. I've just driven it, it's absolutely annoyingly amazing. What Volkswagen are doing is just incredible. So have a look at this car. We can't show you so much of it, we can't show you. We're not allowed to show you the dash or what the battery size is. There's loads of stuff that's still to be revealed in the next 18 months or so. But believe me, this car is truly amazing. So this is going to be the first few metres I drive in an unnamed, unknown vehicle. So we're going up, we go that way. So what I'm doing at the moment is driving the new, really the kind of development model of the VW ID, which will come to market in 2020. And this is a really incredible treat for us and a big privilege to get to drive this car at this stage. And the reason we can't show you the dashboard and the controls and anything, very little of the car is simply because it's still being developed and Volkswagen don't want to show everything at this stage because they're still developing the car. But what is clear, even from the few metres I've driven it, is that it's the drivetrain and the control systems are already very well developed, very solid. You know, it doesn't feel like a sort of wobbly test car. It feels like a production car. It's really, really impressive. And it's something I've come to learn in the time I've been making Fully Charged is we have driven so many cars from so many manufacturers that are, you know, for want of a better term, compliance cars, they're legally obliged to produce electric cars because of various countries or cities or states legislation. So they make a handful of them. And what Volkswagen are doing is the exact opposite of that. This is a mass, this will be a mass produced car in really high volume numbers of vehicles at a much more economically viable level. So they haven't gone for the big, flashy, heavy SUV that a lot of other manufacturers have gone for as their first electric vehicle. They've gone for a mass market, sensible, small hatchback, which is what this is. And now we're off on the wonderful coast road here in South Africa, which is also an amazing treat because I've never been to South Africa before. Have you been to South Africa before? Yeah, so many times, yeah, of course, because we're testing here. So at the moment then you're testing vehicles kind of all over the world, so you're testing them in very cold conditions. It's not that hot here today, but it's getting warmer. Yeah, this is the reason why we are here, because even the mist and humidity is some parameter which is important if you want to do the application of the climate system and so on and so on. So this is very important to drive also here. Beneath of the meteorological conditions we have here, we have everything here. We can drive stop and go in the cities, we have traffic, we want to use and try the car, how it is really behaving in a daily use in conditions which are the main conditions you are driving on. Not driving like Lewis Hamilton, like a normal family who is driving his kids to the school or whatever you have to do. This is the main purpose of this car. Because all the things, you know, the questions that you now get asked, I know you've been asked them countless times in the last couple of days, you know, about battery size and capacity and range, but I mean I can understand why you're not revealing all that, but the kind of predicted range is really impressive. It's not, you know, when a car of this size originally came out, I'm thinking of the Leaf or the Zoe, it was under 100 miles, so 120 kilometers or something, but this is, you're talking... Yeah, the range of this car or this family will be between 330 more or less up to over 500 kilometers, according to the WLTP. But one of the things I can see, you know, because I know all the, this is all in, it's still in its production level, but we've driven quite a long way today and I presume it was pretty full when we left, and it's at 65% now, which is really impressive, you know, because I know how far the cars have come this far, you know, even the tyres and the road noise from the tyres and you're changing that and that. I've learned so much about tyres this morning. Tyres are very complicated. Yeah, it's not straightforward, is it? This is also one of the conditions here in South Africa is that the roughness of the streets are much higher than in Europe or other areas of the world, so we are testing this too. So Frank, regen, because at the moment I can feel there's no regen. Yeah, there's no regen. Now you're driving in normal state, now if you do the twist here, then you're doing the recuperation. Wow, nice, because it's an obsession of mine now, I drive electric cars, I love a bit of regen. Yeah. And actually you can, I can only just hear the motor, I mean it is there, so if I... Yeah, there is one, if you're passing the 60 kilometres, yeah, and there's still remaining something. Right. And this is what we want to, of course, improve in the next step we're doing. Right, because I think it's a good thing, you know, it's useful to be able to hear that, to hear the motor running a bit, and I know there's lots of variations of that. You do not want to have the high frequency motor noise we had before. Of course, it's typical for an electric drivetrain, but imagine, if you do, I have to drive two hours in the car, something like this. You've got this high-pitched whine, that's not good. It's not very comfortable. We have a lot of test equipment in the car too. Right, yeah, no, I saw in the back, it's like a computer showroom in the back. Of course, we are also observing how the first optical performance of the augmented reality head-up is. This is the reason why we, in one of the cars, we have two foils on that, in order to see what foil might be the right one, to have the right picture, at least virtual picture in the screen. Because I know it's not functioning now, but I can see on the windscreen, but it's really interesting how I've not seen the look of that before, you know. I can tell you've got quite a big area that you can project onto, so there's a lot of information on there. In order to find the space in the interior, especially in the front and the rear, where the guys are sitting now, to get them some kind of freedom to move and to have space, we moved all the climate system, where in former cars, the engine compartment was pushed up to the screen, so we have much more freedom to organize the compartment and to do the packaging in the front and the rear. Yes, it goes without saying, it's incredibly roomy inside, even though the exterior is a compact car in a sense, but it doesn't feel it in here. Because I'm just thinking of all the, I know all the questions we'll get asked, particularly in back in the United Kingdom, is when we'll get the right-hand drive one, because we just know we're going to see loads of people have got them in Germany, it's not fair. Trust us, you will get right-hand driving, although you are not in the European community anymore. Who knows, we're speaking too soon. I think literally anything could happen at the moment, but we're not going to talk about the B word. It should not influence the development of the car, at least I think. That's the headline I don't want to see in the Daily Mail, Brexit halts development of ID range, that would be really bad news. Rapid charging capabilities, so it's CCS charger? Yes, CCS charger. And it's up to 100 kilowatts, is it? 125. 125, wow. Well, it makes sense, doesn't it? Yeah, because that stuff is rolling out now. So I suppose, do you yet know the kind of speed you can do, the kind of up to 80% charge? It will be more or less about half an hour. Right. So the production one will have some driver assistance then? Yes, of course. In this integration phase it's still not working, but of course there will be a lot of assistance systems in the car too. At least the car, it's not only an electrical car, it is connected always, let's call it to the internet, it's always on. There will be a communication between the car and the back end, which we are using to interchange information between what is the sensors detecting, what kind of recommendations you can give to the driver, and what kind of services especially. You can order from the HMI system and to buy something additional, there will be the opportunity later on to connect to other vehicles and so on. Right. What we are testing here too is another kind of climate system, which is based on CO2 in connection with the heat pump. Right. So what's the connection with CO2 though? So it's a heat pump? It's a heat pump, but the connection to CO2 is the most climate-friendly system you can do. And that's because, I mean, that's a really important thing with an electric car is the efficiency of the heating, you know, because in the early ones it makes a difference, you turn the heater on and you can't go as far. So the idea is it's a highly efficient system that uses the least energy. The price is what we always are communicating is that it will be on the range of a gold diesel. Right. This is what we are considering as a price. So it's not going to be 5,000 euros more than a diesel or a petrol car, you know, it's going to be roughly in the same price range. The same range as a gold diesel. This is our goal. So financial figures and economies of scale, they have to work. This is the reason too why we have done this kind of modularised platform, which is scalable, which is to be used also on other cars, which we already have shown as a show car. What we show as a show car, it should be taken seriously. So it will be something similar. And then in terms of, you know, because a lot of, there's clearly a lot of problems at the moment with battery supply for some manufacturers, that they're having to delay manufacturing. But from what I've read of Volkswagen, you're really, you know, working ahead to make sure you've got that. This is already, this is done. So the supply of the batteries and so on, this is already fixed. There's no problem for us for the batteries. That's fixed. We spend, of course, a hell of money on that, for sure. But this is fixed. This is not the problem we are dealing with. But you'll be manufacturing the European version in Germany? Production will be in Zwickau. Zwickau was a former plant where the main volume of production was Golf and Passat. Right. And this plant is completely arranged in a new way in order to build only electric cars. Right. So the wheels on it, is that near production ready? The design not, but the size is what it is. Yeah. I mean, you already mentioned there are huge wheels on it. This one, the diameter of this wheel are 705 millimetres. This is much more than every car we have in this segment. And of course, as we have a range of later on SUVs and other cars, the size of the wheels will increase too. The Golf, the car I know really well, I had sort of five different Golfs that was, you know, the GTI, the GTE, the VR6, the R32. Will there be variants of this, do you think, as it progresses? At the moment, are you just doing a standard car? At the moment we are doing this one. Later on, of course, there might be models and there might be an opportunity to do an amplification of the range of our products. But we don't want to have a sports car about that yet. It's a sensible, proper car. It's what cars should be. Right. But then I couldn't help imagining the kind of GT version, four-wheel drive, really powerful, you know, all that stuff. The all-wheel drive, I can promise you, it's really funny to drive. Right. It's really funny to drive. But this is front-wheel drive? No, this is rear-wheel drive. This is rear-wheel drive? Rear-wheel drive. Because I'm so used to Volkswagen front-wheel drive. No, no. In this case, the drive train is in the rear. Right. It's mounted onto a subframe with a multi-link axle and then mounted onto the underbody. That was the thing I noticed when I first saw it was how, you know, effectively the line of the windscreen follows down onto the front of the car. And you look at it for a moment, you go, it would be really hard to put an IC in there. You know, it's a very, it's much lower than you would expect in a car this size. You'd expect a sort of bump to contain an internal combustion engine. I really like the shape of it. Well, that's all we've got time for. I really want to thank Volkswagen for bringing us out here to South Africa. I've never been before. It's been absolutely amazing. Obviously, we've only been here one night and one day, so we haven't seen much, but what we've seen is incredible. Driving the car has been an amazing privilege. We're the first journalist to even be allowed to look inside, let alone drive it. True mass market, mass-produced economically priced electric car. Anyway, that's all. Please do subscribe to Fully Charged for more exclusive first-time drives of amazing vehicles around the world. Please do have a look at the Patreon link beneath this video. And as always, if you have been, thank you for watching.