Photo : VW

Say, did you like that electric Volkswagen ID.3 that dropped at the Frankfurt Motor Show this week? I liked it a lot. If you want your practical, long-range electric people’s cars to not be made in a tent, it could be a great option for you. Too bad it’s not coming to America, a nation addicted to ride height.




Instead, what we will get is the Volkswagen ID.4—essentially the same EV in taller, bigger crossover form, according to a report in Automotive News. And VW brought a heavily camouflaged version of that prototype to Frankfurt, which it hid behind glass:


None of this should surprise you, reader. The ID.3 is a Golf-sized car, and here in America, we’re just plain not buying Golfs unless they happen to be the GTI or Golf R. The market has moved away from smaller cars toward bigger crossovers, and you know automakers are happy about the margins they can score as a result. Plus, one would assume the range differences between the ID.3 and ID.4 will be minimal.

This is the same reason that the latest batch of EVs from Mercedes, Audi and BMW have all been crossovers rather than sedans (though in many cases the sedans come later) and why Ford and General Motors are both planning EV crossovers to come soon—the latter being a bigger variant of the Chevrolet Bolt. It is just what we Americans are buying.

VW has been showing off a concept called the I.D. Crozz for some time now, and we fully expect it to look like that.

I’ll say it’s kind of a bummer we won’t see the handsome ID.3 on our shores. After all, the Tesla Model 3 seems to be doing fine in terms of market share, but even if VW has a superior production system it can’t match Tesla’s hype at the moment.


Bring on the big electric crossovers, let the Europeans have their hatchbacks. I guess.