The new Volkswagen ID.1 will be the brand’s lowest cost EV yet at just $21,000

VW EV division is about to unveil the Volkswagen ID.1, a compact and cheap electric car designed to compete with equivalent offerings from China.

Even the name shows commitment, because by calling it the ID.1, Volkswagen is telling us there’ll never be a smaller EV than this.

It’s supposed to be affordable, too.

If everything goes to plan, it’ll cost just $21,000.

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Why the Volkswagen ID.1 could be a game changer for the brand

There’s a fruit salad of things EV skeptics complain about, chief among which is the fact electric cars are too expensive, especially when compared to their internal combustion counterparts.

That’s a fair point, and an issue, but it’s an issue no legacy automaker has been able to fix yet.

The new ID.1 might be able to solve that problem because it is apparently going to start at around $21,000.

If confirmed, this would make the ID.1 only slightly more expensive than the BYD Seal, and potentially cheaper than the long-anticipated ‘$25,000 entry-level Tesla’ we’ve been waiting on for years.

Marketed as the ‘electric car for everyone’, we don’t know a lot about its technical specs but we do know it’ll be built on Volkswagen’s MEB platform.

The Cupra Raval (below), another compact electric car built on the same platform, offers 222 horsepower and around 270 miles of range, so we can presumably expect similar figures from the ID.1.

We’ll find out more soon enough because the Volkswagen ID.1 will be unveiled in March 2025, with production slated for 2027.

Why the platform the ID.1 is built on is so important

The VW ID.1 will be built using the MEB platform that Volkswagen uses for a bunch of different cars, including another upcoming tiny electric city car, the Cupra Raval.

This platform is a huge deal for Volkswagen for two reasons: it integrates the battery, and it’s scalable.

The fact that it is scalable means it can be used to build the ID.1, which is a car that’s supposed to be around 4 meters (13.1ft) long, but also the ID.Buzz (pictured below), which is 70cm (2.2in) longer than that, and much taller.

In addition to that, it is also flexible, which means you can use it for all-wheel drive, front-wheel drive or rear-wheel drive configurations.

The platform also features a flat battery pack housed right under the floor, which lowers the center of gravity for better stability and handling but also makes the cabin bigger.

One of (several) problems automakers face with EVs is they lose money on every car they sell.

Just the other day, during an earnings call, Ford confirmed it lost about $37,000 for every electric vehicle it sold in 2024.

Manufacturers can’t really raise the price, so the one thing they have to do is save money by using the same platform for everything.

Volkswagen used to be really good at this sort of thing.

For years, we’ve seen Audis and Bentleys built on the same platform as a Volkswagen, and no one really noticed or cared.

Hopefully they can pull it off with electric vehicles as well.