Pricing the latest Volkswagen ID.4 GTX at £55k demands a renaming strategy
Thinking long and hard about the precept of ‘Volkswagen’, Iain Robertson believes that the time has come for the application of a fresh German adjective that can be applied in full, or convenient single letter forms to match its place in the new car scene.
When a moustachioed Austrian by the name of Adolf determined that a people’s car would help to mobilise the population of Germany, the motorcar was an expensive and rare commodity. While the principle is somewhat older than National Socialism, establishing a vehicle production facility in Wolfsburg that would make practical and affordable transport a reality is what Volks-Wagen was built upon.
While accepting that the Ferdinand Porsche design was very basic and its core construction could be lent ideally to a potential war machine, providing gainful employment to several hundred artisans was a masterstroke as far as workers’ unions were concerned. The Volks-Wagen principles were a consummate win:win situation saved, fortunately, in the immediate post-WW2 period by a British Army major, Ivan Hurst.
For many years, Volkswagen served purpose, growing internationally on its strong guiding principles, the primary of which was producing affordable motorcars in developing nations. Yet, as the car has developed into a most sophisticated and, thanks to the perpetual bombardment of legislation, very complex construction, Volkswagen, or VW, has been forced to bump up its pricing schedule, which, in many instances, means leaving behind one of its earlier principles of affordability. This factor is never more abundantly clear than in recent times.
The advent of electrification has led to some critics believing that VW is shapeshifting more speedily into another arena altogether. While removing the character of model nomenclature that gave us ‘The Beetle’, ‘Golf’ and ‘Transporter’, replacing it with non-descript combos of letters and numbers, and accepting that battery packs and electric drive motors can be costly, until volumes are scaled up, seeking brand clarity remains at the heart of VW. Thus, I contemplated a number of possibilities.
The German word ‘teuer’, which means dear, or costly, could add a convenient lower-case ‘t’ in front of VW (‘tVW’), in the process factoring in the new reality of higher price tags, while allowing an additional rhyming cadence. However, it might cause some model complication with the next generation of light commercials from VW. Yet, after considerable adjectivizing, I arrived at ‘bVW’, where the ‘b’ stands for the German word ‘besondere’, which translates as ‘special’ and is more subtle than some of the words I could have proposed.
The new marque name has especial relevance, when applied to the £55,540 price tag of the admittedly fully loaded GTX Max version of the latest ID.4 electric vehicle, for which the list price in non-Max form starts at a more reasonable but still costly £48,510. At this level, the nearest fossil fuel comparator to which might be a VW Sharan 1.4TSi, selling for a more modest ‘people’s car’ price tag around £34k, it does appear that model price parity remains a country mile apart, giving precedence to ‘bVW’ for the ID.4.
Having been awarded Car of the Year status, ID.4 is a ‘besondere’ car. However, look a little closer and its exterior detailing is not so much special, as special needs. VW products of the fossil fuel era are plainly coherent design statements, carrying elements such as the wide ‘S’-form that connects upper and lower sections of the Golf model around its rear haunches. The greenhouse area alone of ID.4 consists of no less than five glazed elements per flank, with four upper-body elements (inc. roof rails) adding to the complexity that even semi-flush glass cannot disguise. They culminate in a slim rear window dictating a tiny rear wiper mechanism that clutters the rear view and does not exactly aid visibility in adverse conditions.
Air-flowing the bonnet’s extremities is an essential aspect of helping ID.4’s ability to cleave through the atmosphere for enhanced frugality but, unlike Honda, which uses deft little exterior cameras, a huge pair of conventional door mirrors confuses the flow of air past the front windows, necessitating the style of the rising and mildly plumped rear quarters. Where the ‘old’ Sharan boasts a generous window area that is great for outward visibility, the ID.4 seems to have adopted a Scottish kirk tax on glazing that restricts the view but makes the pinched flanks necessary to remove slabbiness.
VW describes its newcomer as a pinnacle, sporting option and there is no denying that ID.4’s fully-charged ability to blitz from 0-60mph in around 5.9s is satisfyingly quick but, to protect its battery pack from overheating, the car’s top whack is limited to just 112mph, admittedly 13mph faster than the stock ID.4. While its all-wheel drive stability is unlikely to be questioned, it does make the stated 295bhp power output and accompanying 228lb ft of torque appear flaccid, even with a kerbweight of close to 1.7-tonnes.
Equipped with the same 77kWh battery pack as the Pro Performance models in the ID.4 line-up, the GTX and GTX Max should be able to travel up to 301 and 291mls respectively (WLTP, combined) on a single charge. Both can add up to 199mls of range from a public 125kW rapid charger in just 30mins, which is less of an inconvenience than some EVs. In the meantime, a 7.2kW domestic wallcharger will take a tedious but potentially more cost-efficient 12 hours and 40 minutes to recharge the battery from zero to 100% capacity. Charging to 80% from a DC, CCS charge point takes around 38 minutes.
By the way, the beefed-up suspension package helps to keep the GTX versions of ID.4 on a moderately even keel, clever electronics obviating the inevitable impact of physics, should the driver dare to extend the handling envelope. Accepting that electrification is a ‘brave new world’ for all carmakers, I fail to comprehend bVW’s sense of direction, which gives off a whiff of ‘like-it-or-lump-it’, rather than automotive appeal. From the ‘plugly’ anonymity of its design stance and model badging, it is clear that VW needs a brand name-change, if, for no other reason, than to accommodate sky-high pricing, a factor that consumers and businesses are being forced into accepting, without question.
