VW ID.4 Revealed - Reservations Open
 

I just watched the live reveal for the VW ID.4. The Highlights:

On sale next year

Same size as a Tiguan

Base model has 82 kWh battery, 200 hp, and RWD for $39,995
AWD follows later in 2021 with 300 hp for $43,695

Range estimated at 250 miles

DC fast charging 5% to 80% in 38 minutes
Charges in 7 1/2 hours on Level 2
Owners get 3 years of free changing w/ Electrify America

First year production will come from Germany before the TN plant starts production in 2022. US build vehicles will be about $5K cheaper.

https://s.aolcdn.com/dims-global/dim...official-1.jpg

I think it looks, is speced, and priced to be a winner. In theory the US built AWD will be $39,000 and have the $7500 credit available. It may not be as good as a $50,000 model Y AWD, but that's quite a bit less. It also looks better than the Mach E.

Here in Oregon the RWD version would be $25,000 after tax credits and rebates. That would make it the same price as a base model FWD Tiguan. Add in $6,000 in fuel savings and another $2 - $3K in maintenance savings over 10 years and I can't make a case for buying the gas Tiguan.

The Tesla Y is too expensive for me to consider and it is a Tesla so that is a no-go. (Build quality, interior, Musk). The Mach-E is interesting but $10K more.

250 miles of range and 200 hp is more than enough for me.

I'm not happy with the way options are configured but that might change with US production. Power seats with leather coverings are part of a $4500 option package with nothing else of any value to me. The colors are really boring to: Black, Grey, Silver, White, Blue. AWD models aren't available in blue.

"The (vinyl wrap base) colors are really boring to[sic]:

$25K is Tesla's target for their next model (FUV$x2).

Yup. 3 years from now. Along with the Semi, Roadster, Cybertruck, FSD, and robo-taxi Teslas that make money for their owners.

It isn't the first time he said Tesla would make a $25,000 car in 3 years:

This is from 2018:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MevK...arquesBrownlee

FWD works good in the northern states, but RWD is just a PITA, I don't care how good your traction and stability programs are. So I only compare prices of the AWD versions if there isn't a FWD version. Basically I'd prefer a FWD Tiguan over a RWD ID4, plus we don't get a state incentive. If the Rav4 prime was ramped up to exceed demand that may be the all around best. 80% of the time, maybe more battery only, and when you need a longer trip it's ready to do that without drama as well.

Having grown up in Michigan driving RWD and FWD vehicles I respectfully disagree. A front engine / FWD car has an advantage accelerating on straight and flat roads because the typical FWD car has 60 % of the weight over the front wheels while a front engine / RWD car has 50% or less weight over the rear wheels. With an EV the weight is much more likely to be 50 / 50 or even rear biased eliminating the traction advantage for FWD vehicles.

If you throw hills into the mix FWD is a disadvantage because going up hills shifts weight away from the drive wheels. I’ve had to back up hills in snow with FWD cars due to this.

Once curves get thrown into the mix I hate FWD cars and the way they slide into the oncoming lane if the front wheels break traction. Give me rear wheel slides any day over losing steering when the front wheels spin.

The RAV4 Prime is in contention for me as well. It will depend where we are in life in 4 years when it comes time to replace our VW Sportwagen.

Thanks. My biases confirmed better than I would've done.

My preference is rear engine/rear drive, provided the terminal oversteer is dialed down. Never had a problem with 145s on the front, except downhill in the mountains where the brakes overpower the tires. :eek: With 165-50s on the front I've spun it twice on freeway onramps. Porsches have their problems on offramps, or so I hear.

Apparently so do subie WRX's and a scad of other hotrods.

Well I've been a Montana driver for 36 years now and have to disagree about the RWD. I've tried to convince myself and even others like you over the years that a RWD can be fine but it just doesn't work out that way in real life. There is something about the front tires digging their path vs the rear following the path and pushing the front tires through the snow, that makes the fwd better. There is just more stability in pulling the weight, vs pushing it as well. Probably why they tie the dogs up in front of the sleds rather than behind it.

They won't make the RWD versions of any RWD car rear weight biased because Corvair. So many people will die, it's just not a predictable handling design.

PS edit, why I really came here was to say the first year ID4 sold out in just a few hours so that's a good sign.

Any electric car with good winter tires does great, here in New England. If anything, rear wheel drive does better, because the steering and braking traction is separate from the drive. Rear wheel drive gives better traction under acceleration in all conditions.

We put in a $100 deposit on a blue ID.4 1st Edition. I will let you know how things proceed.
https://carwow-uk-wp-0.imgix.net/vw-...d-1-scaled.jpg
This will be our sixth EV in my immediate family, and my extended family's FOURTEENTH electric car.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGzX4ZCRkhw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Mh7BcIN77I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNIILlfNhWc

Every time I hear this I have to tamp down the anger all over again. Corvair had to die to advance Ralph Nader's career. Which was the high point in retrospect.

How many have died due to understeer? I can think of at least one.

Different strokes for different folks - I prefer a RWD car in snow.


People misunderstand the issues with the 1st generation Corvair. It didn't go into snap oversteer because it was RWD or because it had a rear weight bias. It went into snap oversteer because it had a poor suspension design. GM was cheap and only put universal joints on the inside of the rear driveshafts so the rear wheels didn't stay flat on the ground when the rear suspension articulated up and down. That caused the rear contact patch to decrease in size and the the rear to lose grip. GM fixed this on the 2nd generation - before "Unsafe At Any Speed" was published. The top is 1st gen the bottom is 2nd gen

https://corvaircorsa.com/tech/64-65.jpg


Lots of cars have been sold with rear weight bias since Nader's book helped killed off the Corvair. On opposite ends of the spectrum are the VW Beetle and Porsche 911.

Rear weight bias is especially common on performance cars as the idea ratio is between 45/55 and 40/60.

Rear bias doesn't only help during acceleration is also helps braking because hard braking shifts weight forward and helps load the tires more equally than a front biased cars which overload the front tires under braking.

Every RWD electric car I looked at has a rear weight bias:

48% Front / 52% Rear BMW i3 BEV
45% Front / 55% Rear BMW i3 REX
48% Front / 52% Rear Tesla Model S
47% Front / 53% Rear Tesla Model 3
49% Front / 51% Rear Tesla Model X
46% Front / 54% Rear Tesla Model Y
49% Front / 51% Rear Porsche Taycan

VW made the MEB platform standard RWD because it improves vehicle handling dynamics with no cost or packaging penalties.

That's cool. How many reservations did they book?

Grinds my gears.

http://corvaircenter.com/phorum/file...me=camber1.jpg
http://corvaircenter.com/phorum/file...name=empi5.jpg
Empi Camber Compensator

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/45/7c/8c/4...c0141d76d2.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/45/7c/8c/4...c0141d76d2.jpg

I'll have to give the ID4 a look if it's going to be that affordable in Oregon.

All I know is the VW bug liked to swap ends when heavy braking on loose stuff.

Neil seemed to have a fondness for the VW Golf EV. I appreciated the many regen modes including true coast mode.

Bugs didn't generally need a reason to swap ends. Pretty much any loss of traction was the start front or rear

without rear bias this would not be as fun :)
Edit: changed video to Cold Balls 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ey7d-WiNaXI

Bugs are about 35 / 65 Front to Rear bias, with a lot of weight behind the rear axle to act as a pendulum and cheap swing axle suspensions like the first generation Corvair. Basically NOTHING like a modern EV.

RWD EVs have modern multi-link suspensions combined with a low center of gravity and the weight centered between the axles. For a modern gas car with these characteristics think of the Porsche Cayman

Quoth DDG:
They adapt well to tuning. For instance, my Type I panel van weighed about as much as a Beetle but the weight was lower than a windowed (and upholstered) bus and about 50-50. It had 14x4.5 wheels in front and 15x8 in back. 1 1/8th inch sway bar in back, none in front. De-cambered rear. Gas pressurized shocks.

Never rolled it once, but not for trying.

First auto accident was in the '69 Bug the night before the beginning of my senior year of high school. Rolled it out into a farm field. My friend and I climbed up out of the vehicle to exit the drivers side, and we pushed it uphill back onto the wheels. Pushing it downhill would have been easier, but it would have rolled over the undamaged portion of the vehicle. We put the spare tire on to replace the one that was peeled off its bead.

Probably spent $80 in parts to replace the damaged stuff including a side window, running board and fenders.

My first accident involving a Beetle was when I slid my 1946 Ford (on ice) into the back of a Beetle at ~5mph.

It didn't scratch the chrome on my bumper guard, but the Beetle folded the rear bumper, pulling the brackets sideways through the fenders and shoving the tail-pipes up into the muffler. Swore I'd never own one. ;)

Two years later I got the 1958 convertible. While I was in The Nam my brother [RIP] was driving it in the snow in Portland. They turned up what they thought was a street, but it was a railroad track. Allegedly, there was a train coming. They piled out and the four of them lifted it off the tracks.

I'll race ya'll around town after a big snowstorm in my Grand Caravan and we'll just see.

With a FWD car you definitely can bias the weight on the drive wheels and have no abnormal handling effects. All this 50/50 is great if you running a road course, but around town you stop, go, and turn 90 degree corners. Anything running on the edge of handling is driving like a fool. That said, this is what makes a Subaru so popular up north. You can drive like a fool and it's very forgiving and at least you aren't carrying 3 tons of weight around when you slam into the side of that other family's car.

So does the ID4 have rear weight bias?

Have you driven a modern RWD car with dialed-in traction/stability control in the snow to the limit?

The main factors for snow performance in order are tires, AWD, and clearance. A neutrally balanced car will perform well as RWD.

Better handling is always better even if you don't use it every day. It is about safety and the better a car handles the more you have in reserve.

My commute to work is not all stop and go and 90 degree turns. It also has some steep sections that are hard to climb in a FWD car even with snow tires.

The weight bias of the ID.4 has not been disclosed. The ID.3 is 50/50. Considering the ID.4 has a larger rear overhang I would expect it to carry more weight on the rear wheels but time will tell.

Another benefit of RWD that I didn't think of but that is mentioned in a lot of the ID.3 reviews is the turning radius. Without a motor in front the wheels can turn farther giving a better turning radius. The ID.3 has a turning circle of 10.2 meters. That is less than the much smaller VW Polo that only manages 10.6 meters.

Just one of the fun hairpin turns on my commute:

The BMW 430i Convertible I had on a recent-ish business trip did great in a freak snowstorm that dropped 6 inches of snow the Charlotte area of NC.

If anything the stability control is too good. I tried to relieve my young in an empty snow covered parking lot but I couldn't figure out how to turn off the stability control. The car would spin the wheels just fine but once the back end came out about 45 degrees the stability control say NO MORE and killed the fun. No snowy donuts or drifting for me.

Snowy parking lots were part of my driver education. My father would take me out in the morning after a snow storm and make me practice controlling skids and slides until it was second nature.

Some more ID.4 news.

VW will build it in 3 plants. Production has started in Zwickau, Germany; pre-production builds have started in Anting, China; and production is scheduled for Chattanooga, TN next year.

I learned on gravel, worked my way up to a 14,000GVW box van.

I'm pretty sure my full size truck turns tighter than my Acura. That thing turns like a bus. There's zero U turns I can complete without it becoming a 3-point turn.

Thanks for adding that.

fake split rat and a 1302
Real oval prolly the oldest one there
60ft dragstrip with manual semaphore

I'm telling you, a freak snowstorm here or there is very different than what you get in 3 months of real winter. Our first snows of winter are seldom a big deal for anyone here too. The ground isn't frozen 2 feet down, the burms and ruts haven't turned to ice. With a fresh snow, and the first snows, you can find the slushy bottom.

I see it all the time. If people moving here don't abandon ship completely after the first winter they certainly abandon their RWD cars after the first winter. I want to believe the line RWD is better, I've bought RWD hoping, and have had RWD just sit for 3 months of the year. Meanwhile people who just need to get up before the plows run and get to work 6 days a week buy a AWD or at the bare minimum a FWD.

I'd abandon 2WD if I lived there. I've made a couple winter treks through Idaho and Montana in the company vehicle, but it's got winter rated tires and AWD. I wouldn't have gone if the vehicle were any less capable.

Holy Thread Hijack Batman!
 

Thanks for bringing it back on topic!

The questions I have on the ID.4 are:

Will it have a direct heating defroster? Hopefully they use the improved version with a layer of silver inside the glass.

Will it have a heat pump?

Will there be an option to have the rear seat heated?

I'm aware that a freak snowstorm isn't the same as a full winter. However, I've never owned a modern RWD vehicle with traction control and stability control so rentals are my only experience with them.

My RWD winter driving experience is with old-school vehicles. As mentioned before I grew up in Michigan. I learned to drive in my father's 1982 Oldsmobile 98. No stability control, no ABS, no traction control, and no winter tires. My mother had a late 80's E150 conversion van. Also no driver aids. My parents didn't own a FWD car until they purchased their 2010 Prius.

My father-in-law has always driven RWD F-250s. They live in a rural area so the snow plow doesn't get to their house until 2-3 days after a storm. He still managed to make it to work every day at 6 am. My mother-in-law had a RWD Aerostar van. She replaced that with a RWD Thunderbird. My wife's first vehicle an 80's RWD Ford Ranger. My in-law's first FWD vehicle was 2006 Ford Escape.

People got where they were going before FWD or AWD vehicles were commonplace. If I did a lot of off-road driving on snow I would consider AWD but for paved and gravel roads RWD does fine. Even better with winter tires. (I bought my first set after moving to Oregon and they are a game changer in the passes and forest roads.)

Now a non-traction control, non-stability control RWD vehicle is a whole other story. My wife accidentally spun out several times in the Jeep Liberty just on wet pavement, and she's a conservative driver.

Sorry for the hijacking, but if you read all of the posts at least about FWD, RWD, AWD you see they were about the possibility of an ID4 purchase.

I would buy the non AWD versions of an ID4 or any Tesla if they were FWD not RWD. As they both come in AWD versions it wouldn't be that hard to make all 3, FWD, RWD, and AWD.

I also will always pay up to $5000 more for an AWD vs FWD option, pickup, van, car, whatever. For one, the non AWD versions of most of those have terrible resale where I live. The last new anything I bought was a 2003 Dodge Ram and I made the mistake "saving" $3500 by ordering a 2wd. Also note I ordered it, because the dealer refused to stock a single one. I sould have listened to them because when I sold it I had to list it nationwide and it took a $1200 transport ride to Tennessee to find a 2wd buyer on a cherry 3 year old truck with 17,000 miles on it. Why low miles? Because it was useless for 10 months of that time. We tried to pick up a mattress one winter and needed a tow back up the hill to our house. Don't get me wrong, I bought it as a toy to make a cool sport truck out of it, so popular in the 2000s. I traded in a 2wd Dodge Dakota RT to get it. I actually did drive that Dakota all winter. Sandbags, 4 studded tires on smaller wheels, I had chains for when it got really bad. I even took it hunting up on forest service roads in a foot of fresh snow on top of hard packed snow. Making it work is one thing, living life easy with a Subaru or Jeep is another.

Heated defroster (front or rear?) - No mention

Heat Pump: The VW MEB platform can have resistance heat or a heat pump. On the ID.3 sold in Europe the resistance heater is standard and the heat pump an option. A Canadian article on the ID.4 launch says the heat pump will be standard for Canada. I've haven't seen anything definitive on what will be available in the US market.

Heater rear seats: No. The current option packages specifically say heated front seats with no mention of the rear.

Because the MEB platform is standard RWD the large 200 hp motor is in the rear. The AWD version gets an additional small 100 hp motor in the front. I doubt the large motor fits in the front due to the need to turn the wheels and I don't see them offering a 100 hp FWD version. Even the RWD version is a bit slow.

https://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content....4-12231-1.jpg

It would be fast enough for me, and limiting power draw to 1/2 or 1/3 the other versions you would ultimately get more range as well.

Driving to work in the city will never be fun in any car. I could have a Ferrari and still ultimately I'm going to work not going fishing. If anything the fancier it is, I'm just thinking how much more I have to make that trip to pay for it.