"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: envolkswagen will introduce its first purpose-built electric car next year and this is it the id3 so-called at least in part because it's expected to usher in a third age of success for its maker after those defined by the original Beetle and the Gulf the id3 could be a landmark in the rise of the electric passenger car this is the first model born of an investment worth a staggering fifty billion euros over the next six years from the Volkswagen by 2025 it'll have three factories making id brand electric cars in Germany alone two more in China and one in North America and between them all the company expects to be making a million electric cars a year if you like this video don't forget to Like and subscribe this is the electric cars big watershed moment then maybe to be honest some manufacturers doubt whether there is the appetite just yet for any one of them to be making and selling a million V's a year after all as we know they won't be giving them away however all that stuff is for another day today I'm one of a very lucky select group of journalists who gets to drive the new id3 it's not the finished production version it's a late prototype under camouflage as you can see or maybe you can't see with battery capacities ranging from 45 to 77 kilowatt hours and claimed range from about 200 all the way up to nearly 350 miles it'll be unveiled at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September and on UK roads from April 2020 so the car is like most European TVs in the it'll charge from a regular type to connector from your box at home and also from a CCS wrapper charge of the motorway services and it will charge from one of those at up to 125 kilowatts which is pretty rapid and that'll do an active percent charge even the bigger battery in well under 45 minutes one other thing we like also the charging point for the car isn't on the front it's here at the back just like it was on a knee golf and that means you don't have to drive forward into parking bays which we like okay so welcome to the city of Wolfsburg and this is the id3 the interior the car is kind of the first interesting thing about it really so it's the size of a mark seven golf if that gets a little bit shorter but inside it feels bigger this one most of the interior is covered up so I can't tell you much about how the entertainment looks or the you know the dashboard itself it's all going to stay covered for today but I'm pretty big 6-4-3 I'm not the kind of guy who would choose to sit in the back of most hatchbacks I can sit in the back of this one fine it maybe not lots and lots of headroom a similar amount Headroom that you would get in a golf you have to remember that's because the battery pack is under the floor so the floor is slightly raised up and that's why on the outside the car needs big wheels it was a look was from the driving position here you kind of see some of the bonnet but not too much and the front of the car just drops away in front of you so you know the bonnet is really short because you just saw it from the outside but you can't see the end of the car in front of you and it feels a little bit strange to be driving what you know is a really short car but not quite see the extremities of it it's the way it is with the windscreen being so raked because one of the things this car will offer is an augmented reality head-up display they needed a lot of room on the dashboard ahead of the steering wheel and in front of the windscreen to integrate that really big screen so that the whole thing would work don't often you see a car's design proportions influence in that way by by interior technology but I guess that's where we are with cars these days driving position is comfortable feels a little bit high but pretty normal for a hatchback I've been controlling the transmission on a on a button which is just on the on the instrument panel ahead of me it's a bit like a BMW i3 in that respect to select the transmission on a rotary controller just on the side of the VIP and it looks like all of the speedometer all the instruments they'll all be on that instrument screen how is it to drive it's goodit's it's an electric car it's one of these cars that is in some ways it feels bigger than you expect it to feel because it's because it's you know it's going to be a heavy car between sixteen and seventeen hundred kilos depending on the battery you have so it's gonna weigh more than the average hatchback but it's shorter too and it's got a really tight turning circle that came as a surprise to me but when you when you're in a car park maybe when you're doing a u-turn you certainly feel the benefit of a turning circle what I think is as low as it's less than 10 meters which is kind of it's not far off a turning circle of a of a Smart forfour or something that's going to make the car really maneuverable in town it's gonna be a real selling point I think for a lot of people its maneuverable it's good to drive it's easy to drive but if you're expecting this to be a New Beetle just because it's rear-wheel drive well it doesn't quite feel like that the right of the car mean this one isn't finished this is a prototype so there's a lot of things on this car that aren't quite ready yet one's a brake pedal calibration do other ones a suspension tuning it's still a bit of a work in progress but it feels pretty good the steering's quite light it's sort of medium direct it's not too it's not too fast it's naka ni 3 it feels like a Volkswagen you know it's sort of as you expect it to be its natural its intuitive so the id3 isn't Volkswagens first electric car but it's different enough from the electrified versions of the Gulf and that we already know that you could certainly think of it as its first proper go it's built on a dedicated easy specific model platform called the meb this is the id3 looks like underneath this is the new Volkswagen meb platform which is not stands for Midlands electricity board as you see there's a lot of battery this is the middle sized battery version so that has a 58 kilowatt hour battery right there if you have the smaller battery version interestingly you get the same battery casing it's only 2/3 full of cells if you go for the big 177 kill or hour one you get another pair of modules on the far end of the battery pack as you can see so the batteries are basically the fills to hold for the car it's a lot of battery for a car this size but otherwise well just plain to say the drive motor the transmission is all of the rear you 201 horsepower electric motor just at the back there you've got drive to the rear wheels check for suspension you've got a multi-link system at the bat you've got the first instructor at the front so ending on this model that's light silver it's made out of aluminium otherwise the structure is all steel so if that's pretty standard for for this sort of sized hatchback but obviously interesting Li with everything being packaged at the back in terms of drama transmission it leaves room at the front for the front wheels to move which is why you've got a car with such a nice tight turning circle that's so easy to drive around town so what you expect of course is to feel the influence of the rear mounted engine and the rear wheel drive in the way the car rides and handles and the truth is you don't really feel it at least not as much as you expect to and that's because this is an electric car with a big heavy battery right in the middle of the wheelbase right between the wheels so that said the battery is much heavier than anything else as part of the drivetrain package that makes the weight distribution perfect 5050 it just feels like a bigger slightly heavier take on an average family hatchback there are two powertrain specs you can get either 148 horsepower or 201 both of them have nearly 230 pounds that have talked and we're driving the more powerful one they feel really strong obviously you don't have to change gear you don't really have to think too hard about the traffic around you when you take off from standing because you're always going to have enough performance and the car is really quiet too it's got an automatic noise generator on it because as of this year all electric cars need to have one it's mandated by the law so that Volkswagen is still working on it like they haven't quite decided exactly what the car will sound like and what this engine noise will be and apparently there are people saying there should be a standard engine noise because they're worried that in the future in European cities that are full of electric cars every different electric car will make a different noise and so it will be like a Night at the Opera or something you know you'll have be like a menagerie of electric cars all tweeting and chirping why and God knows what that would be like anyway we've already talked about capacities a little bit this is the middle sized battery so it's 58 kilowatt hours but that's usable net capacity so the battery itself is actually bigger but because you only use 90% of it whatever it is Volkswagen will only claim that usable capacity and it's it's unique or certainly different amongst most Eevee makers in doing that and the reason it's chosen that tactic is because battery capacity is one of the things that warrants on this car so if you but if you buy an ID three and in eight years time your car has less than 70% of the usable battery capacity than it had when it was new and you get a replacement battery under warranty they realize that if they quote growth battery capacity rather than Net battery capacity then they're going to end up paying out quite a lot of warranty claims because the first thing you do is realize that you might have whatever 65 kilowatt gross battery but you're only using 58 kilowatt hours of that in kind of typical motoring and so they've already lost like 15 percent of the capacity and that's not the right way for them to start so anyway they're hoping the industry comes with them everybody else starts quoting net battery capacity instead of gross and what that means anyway in terms of range this cars RW LTP range claim of just over 250 miles I think so I know what you want to know does this feel like a breakthrough for the electric car is the Volkswagen III the car that's going to change the world well it might change its own little corner of it this is not just an electric car after all its innovative its techy it's practical and it's different so there's a lot to like about it besides the zero emissions powertrain great Volkswagens I've always had that ability to offer more than meets the eye and the id3 certainly does that and because it's an e V with the world's largest carmaker standing behind it somehow it's easier to take seriously than others it's got credibility to match the environmental call the truth is it could be it could be the car that changes the world a little bit if you liked this video don't forget to Like and subscribevolkswagen will introduce its first purpose-built electric car next year and this is it the id3 so-called at least in part because it's expected to usher in a third age of success for its maker after those defined by the original Beetle and the Gulf the id3 could be a landmark in the rise of the electric passenger car this is the first model born of an investment worth a staggering fifty billion euros over the next six years from the Volkswagen by 2025 it'll have three factories making id brand electric cars in Germany alone two more in China and one in North America and between them all the company expects to be making a million electric cars a year if you like this video don't forget to Like and subscribe this is the electric cars big watershed moment then maybe to be honest some manufacturers doubt whether there is the appetite just yet for any one of them to be making and selling a million V's a year after all as we know they won't be giving them away however all that stuff is for another day today I'm one of a very lucky select group of journalists who gets to drive the new id3 it's not the finished production version it's a late prototype under camouflage as you can see or maybe you can't see with battery capacities ranging from 45 to 77 kilowatt hours and claimed range from about 200 all the way up to nearly 350 miles it'll be unveiled at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September and on UK roads from April 2020 so the car is like most European TVs in the it'll charge from a regular type to connector from your box at home and also from a CCS wrapper charge of the motorway services and it will charge from one of those at up to 125 kilowatts which is pretty rapid and that'll do an active percent charge even the bigger battery in well under 45 minutes one other thing we like also the charging point for the car isn't on the front it's here at the back just like it was on a knee golf and that means you don't have to drive forward into parking bays which we like okay so welcome to the city of Wolfsburg and this is the id3 the interior the car is kind of the first interesting thing about it really so it's the size of a mark seven golf if that gets a little bit shorter but inside it feels bigger this one most of the interior is covered up so I can't tell you much about how the entertainment looks or the you know the dashboard itself it's all going to stay covered for today but I'm pretty big 6-4-3 I'm not the kind of guy who would choose to sit in the back of most hatchbacks I can sit in the back of this one fine it maybe not lots and lots of headroom a similar amount Headroom that you would get in a golf you have to remember that's because the battery pack is under the floor so the floor is slightly raised up and that's why on the outside the car needs big wheels it was a look was from the driving position here you kind of see some of the bonnet but not too much and the front of the car just drops away in front of you so you know the bonnet is really short because you just saw it from the outside but you can't see the end of the car in front of you and it feels a little bit strange to be driving what you know is a really short car but not quite see the extremities of it it's the way it is with the windscreen being so raked because one of the things this car will offer is an augmented reality head-up display they needed a lot of room on the dashboard ahead of the steering wheel and in front of the windscreen to integrate that really big screen so that the whole thing would work don't often you see a car's design proportions influence in that way by by interior technology but I guess that's where we are with cars these days driving position is comfortable feels a little bit high but pretty normal for a hatchback I've been controlling the transmission on a on a button which is just on the on the instrument panel ahead of me it's a bit like a BMW i3 in that respect to select the transmission on a rotary controller just on the side of the VIP and it looks like all of the speedometer all the instruments they'll all be on that instrument screen how is it to drive it's goodit's it's an electric car it's one of these cars that is in some ways it feels bigger than you expect it to feel because it's because it's you know it's going to be a heavy car between sixteen and seventeen hundred kilos depending on the battery you have so it's gonna weigh more than the average hatchback but it's shorter too and it's got a really tight turning circle that came as a surprise to me but when you when you're in a car park maybe when you're doing a u-turn you certainly feel the benefit of a turning circle what I think is as low as it's less than 10 meters which is kind of it's not far off a turning circle of a of a Smart forfour or something that's going to make the car really maneuverable in town it's gonna be a real selling point I think for a lot of people its maneuverable it's good to drive it's easy to drive but if you're expecting this to be a New Beetle just because it's rear-wheel drive well it doesn't quite feel like that the right of the car mean this one isn't finished this is a prototype so there's a lot of things on this car that aren't quite ready yet one's a brake pedal calibration do other ones a suspension tuning it's still a bit of a work in progress but it feels pretty good the steering's quite light it's sort of medium direct it's not too it's not too fast it's naka ni 3 it feels like a Volkswagen you know it's sort of as you expect it to be its natural its intuitive so the id3 isn't Volkswagens first electric car but it's different enough from the electrified versions of the Gulf and that we already know that you could certainly think of it as its first proper go it's built on a dedicated easy specific model platform called the meb this is the id3 looks like underneath this is the new Volkswagen meb platform which is not stands for Midlands electricity board as you see there's a lot of battery this is the middle sized battery version so that has a 58 kilowatt hour battery right there if you have the smaller battery version interestingly you get the same battery casing it's only 2/3 full of cells if you go for the big 177 kill or hour one you get another pair of modules on the far end of the battery pack as you can see so the batteries are basically the fills to hold for the car it's a lot of battery for a car this size but otherwise well just plain to say the drive motor the transmission is all of the rear you 201 horsepower electric motor just at the back there you've got drive to the rear wheels check for suspension you've got a multi-link system at the bat you've got the first instructor at the front so ending on this model that's light silver it's made out of aluminium otherwise the structure is all steel so if that's pretty standard for for this sort of sized hatchback but obviously interesting Li with everything being packaged at the back in terms of drama transmission it leaves room at the front for the front wheels to move which is why you've got a car with such a nice tight turning circle that's so easy to drive around town so what you expect of course is to feel the influence of the rear mounted engine and the rear wheel drive in the way the car rides and handles and the truth is you don't really feel it at least not as much as you expect to and that's because this is an electric car with a big heavy battery right in the middle of the wheelbase right between the wheels so that said the battery is much heavier than anything else as part of the drivetrain package that makes the weight distribution perfect 5050 it just feels like a bigger slightly heavier take on an average family hatchback there are two powertrain specs you can get either 148 horsepower or 201 both of them have nearly 230 pounds that have talked and we're driving the more powerful one they feel really strong obviously you don't have to change gear you don't really have to think too hard about the traffic around you when you take off from standing because you're always going to have enough performance and the car is really quiet too it's got an automatic noise generator on it because as of this year all electric cars need to have one it's mandated by the law so that Volkswagen is still working on it like they haven't quite decided exactly what the car will sound like and what this engine noise will be and apparently there are people saying there should be a standard engine noise because they're worried that in the future in European cities that are full of electric cars every different electric car will make a different noise and so it will be like a Night at the Opera or something you know you'll have be like a menagerie of electric cars all tweeting and chirping why and God knows what that would be like anyway we've already talked about capacities a little bit this is the middle sized battery so it's 58 kilowatt hours but that's usable net capacity so the battery itself is actually bigger but because you only use 90% of it whatever it is Volkswagen will only claim that usable capacity and it's it's unique or certainly different amongst most Eevee makers in doing that and the reason it's chosen that tactic is because battery capacity is one of the things that warrants on this car so if you but if you buy an ID three and in eight years time your car has less than 70% of the usable battery capacity than it had when it was new and you get a replacement battery under warranty they realize that if they quote growth battery capacity rather than Net battery capacity then they're going to end up paying out quite a lot of warranty claims because the first thing you do is realize that you might have whatever 65 kilowatt gross battery but you're only using 58 kilowatt hours of that in kind of typical motoring and so they've already lost like 15 percent of the capacity and that's not the right way for them to start so anyway they're hoping the industry comes with them everybody else starts quoting net battery capacity instead of gross and what that means anyway in terms of range this cars RW LTP range claim of just over 250 miles I think so I know what you want to know does this feel like a breakthrough for the electric car is the Volkswagen III the car that's going to change the world well it might change its own little corner of it this is not just an electric car after all its innovative its techy it's practical and it's different so there's a lot to like about it besides the zero emissions powertrain great Volkswagens I've always had that ability to offer more than meets the eye and the id3 certainly does that and because it's an e V with the world's largest carmaker standing behind it somehow it's easier to take seriously than others it's got credibility to match the environmental call the truth is it could be it could be the car that changes the world a little bit if you liked this video don't forget to Like and subscribe\n"