Volkswagen has indicated that it could kill off the all-electric ID.3 when the all-electric next-generation Golf arrives in the market.
The company recently unveiled the facelifted Golf and VW’s head of technical development Kai Grunitz has confirmed this will be the final combustion-powered version of the iconic model. While he did not confirm when it will be replaced by the all-electric model, it’s expected that it’ll arrive in 2028 based on the Golf’s traditional eight-year production life cycle.
Speaking with Top Gear, Grunitz described the Golf as “the heart of our brand,” and said that it “won’t kill the Golf,” but acknowledged that it will not have enough space in its range to accommodate both the ID.3 and an electric Golf.
“There is not enough space to have two or three different models fitting to the same customer,” Granitz said. “We’ve started to work on a fully electric Golf. We have concrete ideas of how it will look like, but we will see how the market develops. There will be an overlap [between ID.3 and electric Golf].”
There will be plenty to differentiate the next-generation Golf from the ID.3. According to Granitz, it will not be an ID.3 in Golf clothes and unlike the ID.3 which is underpinned by the MEB platform, it will use the marque’s newer Scalable System Platform (SSP).
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“If we bring an electric vehicle with the name Golf, it has to be real Golf,” he said. “It has to look like a Golf. It has to be affordable like a Golf. It has to be [capable] like a Golf. And there has to be a GTI. The idea is to have the same electric architecture. Today you have four or five different architectures. But SSP will be a common electronic architecture for the whole group.”
It is not yet clear if the electric Golf will be front-, rear-, or all-wheel drive but it seems most likely that standard and GTI variants will be front-wheel drive while a future electric version of the Golf R could be all-wheel drive with twin electric motors.
