The ID.Space Vizzion concept will materialize in serial form next year, the nearly five-meter station wagon will offer above-average space for the crew and a decent trunk. In the tide of electric SUVs, it has no chance to go unnoticed.
Now it’s called ID.7 Shooting Brake, but it doesn’t matter what it’s called. The large Volkswagen station wagon is one of the stars of the fourth annual e-Salon “clean mobility fair” in Prague’s Letňany, which opens to the public tomorrow. Except for the skateboards attached to the trunk’s double floor cover, the car looks quite original. It can be seen on display in a four-seater version, but alternatively it should have five-seater as well.
Like all current VW electric cars, the ID.7 will also have a motor above the rear axle that drives the rear wheels, but there will also be a version with two motors and all-wheel drive. In this case the power of the car system will be 340 horsepower, the rear wheel will have to be content with 279 horsepower. Thanks to the favorable aerodynamics, the car does not need a particularly large battery for the indicated range of 590 kilometers, it is sufficient with a useful capacity of 77 kWh.
While most electric Volkswagens speak an entirely new design language, there is one exception that harks back to the deep past. The legendary “bus” is no less cute in its electric form than its 1950s T1 predecessor. For the first time, visitors to the e-Salon can see its commercial Cargo version, which has a fixed partition wall that separates the cargo area behind the front seats.
“In the near future, we plan to expand the offering with more powerful and weaker versions of the engine, all-wheel drive, as well as the Long version with a longer body and optionally up to seven seats,” says Jakub Šebesta, who heads the section of commercial vehicles at the Czech Volkswagen representative office. The currently produced ID Buzz has an engine power of 204 horsepower, a range of 425 kilometers and can carry 650 kilograms of cargo.
But if anyone is tempted by the idea of delivering vegetables in what is arguably the most stylish van in the world, they’ll have to forget the prices they knew in the past. The ID Buzz Cargo on display in Letňany costs exactly 1,743,882 crowns, a figure for which a Mercedes S-Class could have been purchased some time ago.
Measured by demand, the high prices of electric cars apparently don’t bother some customers that much. By the end of September, Volkswagen had sold 366,400 electric cars worldwide, exactly a quarter more than in the same period last year. And as Jan Hurt, CEO of Porsche Czech Republic pointed out at the press conference on the eve of the e-Salon opening, sales were also negatively impacted by the chip crisis.
The largest market for electric Volkswagens is Europe, closely followed by China and the United States. When it comes to selling electric cars, there are huge differences between the individual countries of the old continent. While battery-powered cars accounted for only 3.2% of total new car sales in the Czech Republic last year, in Norway over 86% of buyers chose a car with no local emissions. In Europe, only Slovaks and Bulgarians are less interested in electric cars than Czechs.
