VW SA unveils all-electric ID.4 Pro — but future of EVs is not clear-cut (2024)

The Paris Agreement, signed at COP21 on 12 December 2015, set the stage for revolutionising the way the entire global motoring industry would approach designing and manufacturing automobiles — all in search of a much-touted “zero emissions” future. Back then, the shadow of Dieselgate loomed large.

Just three months before the world’s nations met in Paris to discuss climate change, all hell broke loose in September 2015 after the “clean air” cops in the US announced that the German-owned motoring giant Volkswagen had cooked the books.

According to the USA’s EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), software had been fiddled with in turbocharged diesel models to show acceptable nitrogen oxide and nitrogen dioxide levels in the testing stages, when in real-world driving the vehicles emitted up to 40 times more noxious emissions.

It soon emerged that about 11 million VW models, built between 2009 and 2015, were affected. By 2020, Dieselgate had cost the Volkswagen Group more than $33-billion in fines, penalties, financial settlements and buyback costs.

VW was not alone in “adjusting” emission results. Over time it transpired that other car manufacturers including Volvo, Renault, Hyundai, Fiat and Jeep had also shown significant deviations in testing and reporting carbon emissions levels, but it was VW that took the brunt when it came to payback.

While I have loved the battery electric vehicles (BEVs) I’ve driven over the years — the Mercs, Audis, BMWs, Jags and Volvos — I’ve also watched the “go all-electric story” develop with some scepticism.

All-electric in SA?

The first time I heard the “go all-electric by 2030” idea, I wondered how this was going to work. Especially on our continent where power supply issues are an everyday challenge, never mind there being a severe lack of sufficient charging points. (South Africa currently only has about 350 public EV charge points, by far the most on the continent.)

Let’s not even begin to unpack the exorbitant pricing of BEVs, largely due to the prohibitive 25% taxation on these vehicles.

I’ve also noticed how the two top-selling local manufacturers — Toyota and VW SA — have largely remained in the background when it comes to offering all-electric vehicles to the SA market. Sure, hybrid has always been big for Toyota SA, especially when it comes to their premium Lexus range. These days they’ve even got a mild-hybrid 48V Hilux, but all-electric? Nah.

The same can be said for VW SA, whose top-selling traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) Polo Vivo and Polo are the company’s bread and butter in SA.

In 2022, I got a taste of VW’s eGolf, the ID.3, which was made available for media to “live with” for a couple of weeks. Now the ID.4 Pro is “here” but not in the traditional sense of the word.

At a recent media briefing in Cape Town, it was announced that Volkswagen would deploy a 10-strong ID.4 test fleet, available to the media and dealerships to gather feedback to help inform the brand’s plans for its EV roll-out in the coming years. However, the ID.4 won’t be on sale locally for quite some time. Next year it will be available on lease agreement and only in 2026 will it be up for grabs on sale to the general public.

On the “launch” day, the media were invited to spend a couple of hours in the ID.4 Pro, getting a feel of its drive and tech capabilities.

Testing the ID.4 Pro

The ID.4 Pro, with its respectable 500km battery range is a crossover-inspired, mid-size SUV, similar in size to the brand’s popular Tiguan. It’s rear-wheel drive and is good for 150Kw and 310Nm.

I found the interior well laid out, ergonomic and reassuringly “VW” with its 10-inch touchscreen infotainment system which has not deviated from the brand’s familiar layout. Legroom is generous for front and rear passengers and the 543L of boot space is ample.

The drive on a particularly wet and windy Cape winter day felt planted, safe and smooth. And of course, totally silent. The heated seats and windscreen wipers, which remained on high settings throughout the trip, did the job commendably.

While I didn’t need to charge my electric steed, it was reassuring to know that the ID.4 is fast-charge compatible and can juice up to 150kW, from zero to 80% in 40 minutes. I look forward to “living” with the car for a week in September.

A decade since Dieselgate

Since Dieselgate, the last decade has seen a slew of “new energy” vehicles flood the planet, all in the name of a more “green-conscious” future. From hybrid to hybrid-electric, to pure battery-run EVs, there have been times when it felt like the good old ICE engine was heading for the cemetery.

Before 2015, Tesla, with its Roadster sports car, introduced in 2008, and Nissan’s Leaf, introduced in 2010, were the two main players in the all-electric battery field. By 2014, total global sales of all-electric vehicles since 2010 were 500,000 units. By early 2020, the 10 million EV milestone was reached. A year and a half later, in June 2022, sales of EVs had doubled to 20 million and by the end of 2023, 40 million all-electric cars had found homes on the planet.

But in recent times the rumblings have begun, questioning the viability of this “all-electric” future.

Has the EV market stalled?

There have been increasing reports of late that the EV market is in the doldrums. Globally, there are more and more stories of EVs lying dormant and unsold on dealers’ lots.

Tesla has been slashing prices. General Motors, which once swore to be all-electric by 2030, recently announced it was abandoning its short-term EV goals.

In a recent Goldman Sachs report, “Why are EV sales slowing?”, published in May, the lukewarm sales of EVs were attributed in part to a global shortage of rapid-charging stations and a sharp drop in the value of used EVs. In a report in Wired on August 16, it was claimed that certain EVs were “haemorrhaging value”, with Polestar, Merc, Tesla and Porsche losing up to 50% of their trade-in value in a single year.

Let’s be realistic. South Africa is a world away from an all-electric vehicle future. While “new energy” sales have shown some growth over the years, there were still only 7,693 new energy vehicles sold in 2023 and these include traditional hybrids, plug-in-hybrids, as well as fully electric vehicles. EV registrations in 2023 came in at 931 cars. For some perspective, this represents 0.17% of the 532,098 overall vehicle sales in 2023.

These figures probably explain why the local Japanese-owned Toyota and German-owned Volkswagen motoring kingpins have not got a single pure battery electric vehicle in their showrooms.

In Europe, the US and China, Volkswagen has a strong BEV footprint. The ID.4 is its best-seller globally. But when it comes to the ID.4 in SA, one gets the feeling that, like Toyota, VW SA is taking a cautious approach, waiting to assess how this whole “electric thing” is going to pan out in SA.

As with many extreme ideas, the deadline for this “all-electric/zero emissions” future within the global motoring industry keeps shifting. We’re currently looking at 2050. Akio Toyoda, the chairperson of Toyota, the world’s largest-selling brand, recently predicted that the vast majority of vehicles sold in coming decades would not be fully electric.

The pricing of the VW ID.4 Pro is yet to be announced. DM