Affordable electric vehicles are on everyone’s lips these days, but one name is missing from the discussion. Volkswagen launched its ID family of electric vehicles seven years ago with the promise of electric mobility “for the millions, not millionaires,” but at least in the United States that promise remains.
The VW Group has wasted resources on its luxury Audi and Porsche brands and even created the new Scout brand to challenge Rivian, but it has left the namesake brand stagnating. VW only sells the aging ID.4 crossover in the USA. It’s an unfortunate situation for one of the most promising attempts by an established automaker to bring electric vehicles to the masses. But VW may have already found a way out.
The ID vision
Emerging from the soot and ashes of the “Dieselgate” emissions scandal, Volkswagen has increasingly relied on electric vehicles to polish its image and meet stricter emissions standards in the future. The result was a flexible architecture called MEB that could support multiple models built in high volume, enabling economies of scale to make electric vehicles affordable and profitable.
To show it’s serious, VW named the first MEB-based model available on the European market – a hatchback model shaped like a computer mouse from the 1990s – the ID.3 to mark its status as an epochal vehicle after the original Beetle and the Golf, the model that brought VW into the modern age and ushered in the era of the basic front-wheel-drive compact car. Production began in 2019 and VW said at the time that it would have 50 electric models by 2028, with a total of 15 million cumulative global sales.
Knowing that Americans have an aversion to hatchbacks (partly due to bad memories of the early diesel versions of the Golf), VW decided to bring the MEB revolution to this market with the ID.4, a crossover SUV designed to compete with popular models like the Toyota RAV4. More importantly, VW planned to build the ID.4 in large numbers at its Tennessee factory, entice dealers to sell it, and offer it at a competitive price starting at around $35,000.
The ID.4 reality
VW was initially able to keep this promise. The ID.4 came onto the market in 2021 as a somewhat boring entry that, apart from early software problems, was also harmless. In other words, similar to the gasoline crossovers it sought to compete with. The starting price of the electric vehicle was $41,190 and the range was 260 miles in the introductory rear-wheel drive version. VW soon added an all-wheel drive version and increased production in Tennessee.
The automaker continued to sell a high of 37,789 units in 2023, but a door lock issue that forced a recall and production halt limited sales in 2024. Production restarted just in time for the repeal of federal EV incentives and general economic chaos in 2025, but VW recovered throughout the year, selling 23,373 units. However, a further decline in production meant that the ID.4 ran out of charge towards the end of the year and only 248 vehicles were delivered in the fourth quarter.
A chaotic 2025 likely masked a steady decline. The ID.4 is now an old model by industry standards and no longer competitive with models like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and the Kia EV6, whose 800-volt electrical architecture lets the VW down when it comes to charging. And while the longest-range versions can now travel about 290 miles per charge, the price has also increased to about $45,000. You can outfit a 318-mile Ioniq 5 for about $7,500 less.
Distractions
How did VW get to this point? Mission creep is partly to blame. For the 2023 model year, the automaker did introduce a cheaper version of the ID.4, but it still cost just under $39,000 – still a few grand below the original target – and only had a range of 209 miles. But VW largely ignored the ID.4 after that, focusing on two models that proved to be a waste of time.
The first was the ID.7 sedan, which, despite its sleek looks, was always difficult to sell in the United States. Whether gasoline or electric, sedan sales have hit rock bottom on this side of the Atlantic. VW talked a big game, staged an unveiling in the US and even invited American media to drive the ID.7, but pulled the plug before sales began.
Meanwhile, VW had been testing a modern version of the classic Microbus based on the MEB architecture, starting with a concept car unveiled at the 2017 Detroit Auto Show. The production ID.Buzz didn’t come to the US until the 2025 model year, and only in an overpriced form that attracted few buyers. As of this writing, the buzz has been put on hold for the 2026 model year. The fact that the ID.Buzz was spearheaded by VW’s European commercial vehicle division likely contributed to its flop as a passenger car in the US market.
Can VW turn things around?
It’s tempting to think that VW’s sputtering EV efforts are just another reflection of the automaker’s difficulty understanding the U.S. market, the same ignorance (or perhaps arrogance) that led to Dieselgate and has generally made VW a smaller player in that market for a company of its size. Only this time VW might actually have a plan to change things.
Automotive News Europe reported this week that the ID.4 will become the ID.Tiguan as part of an upcoming refresh. It marks a departure from the ID-EV models as a new era for VW, but also brings the ID.4 closer to its original mission of competing with the most popular gasoline crossovers. The Tiguan is VW’s best-selling model in the U.S., and adopting its name gives customers a frame of reference, just as the Chevrolet Equinox EV gives General Motors buyers a frame of reference. Hopefully this will be backed up by changes that make the ID.4/Tiguan feel more like a normal car and less like a mix of technology trends.
A refreshed ID.4 could still be relevant in a US market where small electric crossovers remain popular and where VW already has a local production base that many other brands want. We’ll still be a long way from the lofty goals with which the ID project was launched (VW reported selling 1.3 million ID family electric vehicles worldwide in 2024), but an affordable, practical electric vehicle is just as important today as it was then.
