Volkswagen has been teasing a budget EV for some years now, and its answer to the challenge is the new ID Polo, which is due to be launched here in the autumn.
Realising that several other manufacturers were well ahead of them in this race, VW was expected to launch its new small EV at a price somewhere below €25,000.
However, Hyundai in particular stole everyone's thunder with the Inster - a budget city car costing less than €20,000. Then came the even cheaper Dacia Spring, which has now been dropped from the Irish market because of the Inster’s superior abilities.
This all left VW with a big challenge.
In terms of price at least, the challenge has been met, and the price for Ireland of the new ID Polo is €19,885. For that, you’ll get a car that promises generous interior space and a choice of two batteries.
The entry-level battery is a 37 kWh unit that should make it strictly a city car, and the bigger battery is a 52 kWh unit that VW says will deliver "up to 454 kilometres" of range and that will cost you more. We don’t have an exact price for the longer range version. Again, we stress the caveat about claimed ranges from car manufacturers.
Outputs from the batteries will range from 115 to 211 horsepower.
We have not seen this car, but VW says it will offer "high quality materials, physical buttons and rotary controls". So, hurrah for the return of buttons as promised by VW chiefs recently.
The images we have seen suggest the car closely follows the bigger ID electric cars we have seen from VW up to now, and is built on the same platform.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
