VW Planning A Hotter ID 3 R With All Wheel Drive And More Power

So the new VW ID 3 has been finally revealed but it’s only the beginning as the German car maker has a lot more EV-related goodies for us.

One of them is a high-performance R version of the ID 3, which is going to arrive in the market by 2024, featuring all-wheel drive and more powerful electric motors.

Speaking to Autocar, VW sales boss Jurgen Stackmann confirmed that the R badge will eventually be featured in an all electric car. “If there is a future for R it must be electric, it’s very simple. It won’t be next year, because we need to define what R is in the electric world.”

Also Read: New VW ID.3 Wants To Become The Golf Of Electric Vehicles

Before launching the ID 3 R though, VW will first introduce a plug-in hybrid Touareg R as confirmed by Stackmann himself.

“Clearly the word R means high output combustion engine, and that will now move to higher output plug-in hybrid systems and then it will move onwards to R electric. We need to get firm on our electric vision fast,” Stackmann said.

Offering a hotter version of the ID 3 is one of VW’s top priorities when it comes to how the new electric model will evolve over the coming years, according to the company’s R&D chief Frank Welsch. “We should have the same as cars such as the Golf, the GTI and R. People like performance and I’m sure people will love performance in ID cars too,” Welsch said.

“The situation is different – even in the normal ID, we have good performance right from the very beginning, you just touch the pedal and you feel the punch,” he added. “From 0-60km [37 mph] is like the GTI. No GTI is faster than the ID 3. At the upper end, of course GTI is better.”

How do turn the ID 3 into a proper high-performance machine? “We need four wheel drive and a performance e-motor. It won’t be called GTI, let’s see whether it’s R or something else,” Welsch said. “In under five years is okay. We have a lot of other work to do with other ID models and the Golf, Tiguan and so on, before then.”