The Volkswagen ID.3, the hatchback that launched VW's electric reinvention
Within 24 hours of opening pre-orders, Volkswagen had 10,000 reservations for a car nobody had yet seen in final form. The ID.3 was the first passenger model on the group's dedicated electric platform, and its bumpy software launch and steady revisions tell the story of a giant carmaker learning a new trade.
It started as the I.D. concept at the 2016 Paris Motor Show, which promised camera-based wing mirrors, a battery laid out like a chocolate bar and pop-up LiDAR sensors for self-driving, not all of which reached production. In May 2019 Volkswagen confirmed the ID.3 name instead of the rumoured Neo, and by the car's unveiling in Frankfurt on 9 September 2019, alongside a new company logo, reservations had reached 30,000.
Production was centred on Volkswagen's Zwickau factory, which the company expected to devote its full capacity of 330,000 cars a year to electric models, with a second line added at the Transparent Factory in Dresden in 2021. Software faults delayed deliveries until September 2020, when stripped-down cars reached German buyers first and cloud-connected ones followed at the end of that year. Even so, almost 57,000 were delivered in 2020, enough to rank among the world's ten best-selling plug-in cars after only four months on sale.
At launch both versions shared a 150 kW motor and differed in battery size, 58 kWh for the Pro Performance and 77 kWh for the Pro S, whose pack weighs 495 kg. A cheaper Pure Performance with 45 kWh arrived in April 2021, and a later upgrade lifted the Pro S to 79 kWh. Volkswagen guarantees the battery keeps 70% of its capacity after 8 years or 160,000 km. A slippery drag coefficient of 0.267 helps range, and DC fast charging reaches up to 125 kW on the bigger battery.
Critics were kind: What Car? named it Small Electric Car of the Year in January 2021 with five stars. A facelift in March 2023 improved interior materials, and in April 2026 a heavily reworked ID.3 Neo returned physical controls on the steering wheel and brought back four separate window switches.
Source: Volkswagen ID.3
