The Volkswagen ID.Polo is out there on the street. It was officially unveiled in the spring, and the first cars are reaching dealers and customers in Europe as we speak. The Polo, oftentimes the cheapest available new Volkswagen and sometimes one of the least expensive models, is dropping the ICE powertrain completely and transitioning into an electric-only offering, which means the prices have taken a jump as well. How does it feel like in the metal?
I was able to take a launch edition ID.Polo for a short spin around my town, as Volkswagen is now opening orders for it and the nearest dealer set up a pop-up demo event on the town square.
As they were fixing up the tent, I got the first slot of the day and took the blue VW’s keys for a half hour.
A No-Nonsense VW EV Is A Good Thing
Volkswagen’s electrification is rolling along. In the cheaper end, beneath the ID.4 and the ID.Buzz, which are also sold in North America, there have been a couple of different ways for Volkswagen to develop its offerings: either the no-nonsense, ICE-based cars such as the tiny e-Up! and the 2014 e-Golf, or the 2020-on ID.3 based on the MEB EV platform, with no ICE derivative.
The rear-wheel-drive ID.3 tried to redefine the idea of the Volkswagen family hatchback into an electric monospace creation, but its design and UI have been toned down in the latest ID.3 Neo iteration. The capacitive touch controls, which became a point of discussion, are now replaced with regular buttons that everybody kept asking for.
The ID.3 seemingly took a few notes from the earlier, 1990s Futura concept car, as it was similarly bubble-shaped, just with no gullwing doors.
What Is A New Volkswagen Polo Worth?
One of the elephants in the room is cost. Even if you have to consider inflation, it wasn’t that long ago that a German customer could buy a new Polo and pay around half of the new ID.Polo’s entry price: a 2018 base spec car with a one-liter engine and a 5-speed gearbox cost 13,000 Euros, or less than $15k.
But those cars were different in the sense that they were just small, three- or four-cylinder hatchbacks with barely any power, designed to offer a Volkswagen experience with less money than a Golf, but offering more space than the triplet cars (the VW Up!, the Seat Mii and the Skoda Citigo).
Those three cars were also offered as cheap-ish electric versions. The e-Up! and its siblings were well loved, but VW did manufacture them for a long time, powertrain-wise, they weren’t anything special, and while they were about as well packaged as a tiny car can be, there simply wasn’t that much space inside.
It takes dedication to run one of those as your only car, if you have a family. A slightly bigger Polo-sized version with a usable trunk and rear seat has been a long time coming.
What Is A $30k European EV Like?
The new ID.Polo battles in the hotly contested 25,000 to 30,000 Euro EV segment, which has a lot of offerings from both European carmakers (Renault with its R4 and R5 E-Tech, Stellantis with the Citroën ë-C3 and Opel Frontera) and Asian (the Korean Hyundai Inster and Chinese cars such as the MG MG4). The base price for the ID.Polo is 26,390 Euros here, which is almost exactly $30,000.
Despite what’s often claimed on social media, you don’t have to spend 50 grand to drive around in a new EV. Half will do, and while it means a compromise in range and interior space, for a lot of use cases these cars will be completely fine. Most of the use will be in urban areas, on city streets, but these are still family hatchbacks that are perfectly usable outside town.
In Northern European countries, with the characteristic blend of cheap electricity and expensive gas, any 25,000 Euro EV stacks up well compared to spending money on fuel. With a sub-20k newish ICE Polo and ten-dollar gas, if you spend thousands per year just fueling it compared to charging costing hundreds, the math will eventually math towards an EV, even compared to a frugal car. If demand stays up, it will also bode well considering residuals, something that’s not always that clear-cut with EVs; also, the cheaper the car, the less it will get beat up by depreciation. The e-Up! and its SEAT and Skoda versions have kept their values well in the last ten years.
In Germany, with its expensive household electricity, the product needs to be especially good, as amortizing the extra cost will take longer. But the ID.Polo has such a long wait list (easily over a year in Germany, six months for the small Finnish allocation that’s being dealt now) that it seems to be working. Volkswagen has faced such an uphill battle in recent years that it’s clear people aren’t buying its cars just for the brand’s sake.
Driving The New VW ID.Polo
The ID.Polo Style Launch Edition is priced at 35 grand, a sizeable step up from the base price, but it also comes with a bigger battery, more power and a lot of kit like the glass roof. It has a 52kWh battery that gives it a 442km (275-mile) WLTP range, with an advertised 13,8kWh/100km energy consumption. The advertised 349 euro ($400) monthly price on the door actually refers to the leasing price of the base 37kWh Trend, as you’d pay a hundred Euros more per month for the launch edition car.
The 52kWh car has plenty of power, 210 hp, which is about the same as a Mk4 Golf 2.8 VR6. One of those weighed around 3,000lbs and the ID.Polo weighs more, easily over 3,400lbs, but the instant torque means a seven-second 0-to-60mph time that matches the Golf.
The first impression of the ID.Polo is the heaviness and heft VW has applied to it. The doors close with the sort of satisfying thunk you’d hope for, and behind the non-round steering wheel, you sit surrounded by cloth and a tall beltline. It seems round steering wheels are getting rarer these days.
The door cards, dash, and center console are all lined with the same slightly denim-like material as the seats, which helps to remove any apparent cheapness. Since the ID.Polo isn’t cheap-cheap even in stock form, it needs to feel expensive enough. The cabin does feel markedly better than the Volvo EX30, even if there is a splash of recycled plastic in use here, too. Piano black is nowhere to be seen.
Look At These Cool Retro Gauges And Real Buttons
Ahead of the driver is a smaller display, with some of the functions relegated to the center touchscreen. The car runs an Android-based OS, and its actions are pleasantly free of lag, even if it takes a little while to get used to.
The same applies to the control stalks on the steering column: as with previous VW:s, on your right is the drive direction stalk that’s twisted for forward or backward progress, and the park position is selected from the button in the end. On your left is the multifunction stalk that seems initially impenetrable, with wipers toggled from tiny little switches on the stalk.
Again, it’s fine once you’re used to it, and it’s visible through the steering wheel, unlike the cruise control stalk on Peugeots. The cruise control, audio, and menu buttons on the steering wheel are real and not haptic.
Like in the ID.3 Neo, the user interface can be switched over to a retro look that matches the 1980s Polo, Golf and Jetta. It’s neat, as clear as the original 40-year-old design, and I respect VW’s nod to the heritage models, but I wouldn’t want all of the usability to rest on a “hey, look at this retro stuff” sort of disguise. In the original cars, the row of LEDs in the middle housed warning lights and green indicator bulbs, but they do nothing here.
If you pay $30k for a car, you could have different gauges than the $3k Craigslist hatch you might have in the barn, and I feel like I would keep the regular 2020s gauges on. It has to be said the range display and “trip computer” done in ‘80s fashion are well done, as is the radio.
For anyone wanting to immediately disable the mandatory 2026-spec assist beeps and bongs, the settings for those can be set in a speed dial in the top menu. A dedicated physical button, Renault style, would be nice.
Speaking of real buttons, look! You can still adjust HVAC controls on the screen, but the physical buttons for it are very welcome. Underneath, the fully loaded cars have a wireless phone charging tray.
Our asphalt is coarse and patchy thanks to the elements and studded winter tires conspiring together to eat our roads, but road noise was minimal. The wheels are large 18-inch items with 215/50R18 Bridgestone summers, and a small hatch could probably do with smaller ones that offer more tire profile, but the launch-spec big wheels do look good. The ID.Polo rides well and takes speed bumps with grace.
The steering is well-weighted and realistic instead of being artificially light, even if the car feels heavy instead of a canyon-carving rocket, and this isn’t RWD anymore, either. No AWD will be available for the ID.Polo, nor the related ID.Cross crossover version.
Combined with the 210 horsepower that’s instantly available, the ID.Polo feels like you’d easily end up driving it very briskly, as a lighter car would feel more fun even when going slower. That said, the sensation of weight here is strongly associated with the car’s quality feel.
Later on, there will be an ID.Polo GTI with a slight power upgrade to 226 horsepower and a sportier look inside and out. Still, I’d love to try the base-spec 37kWh car that will have just 115 horsepower, and see how it feels out on the open road. There is no mentioned weight difference between the 37kWh and 52kWh cars.
Can You Fit In It?
The cargo area in the ID.Polo has a false floor with three settings: high, low, and forgotten at home. Remove the false floor, and the space there takes big water canisters, for example, without issue.
The trunk is large and really deep, as the driveline is FWD and the rear axle is an uncomplicated torsion beam setup, both freeing space in the rear. Conversely, there’s no frunk. Total trunk capacity is 441 liters, a handsome amount for a smallish hatchback that’s 4.05 meters (13.3 feet) long.
The rear seat isn’t immensely spacious. Sitting behind six feet of myself, I’d have my knees up against the front seat; for a family car or a second car, it’s fine if there are just kids in the back, and if the ISOFIX seat is front-facing, there’s no space problem. The seat back is lined with vinyl, which helps keep it clean in family car use. Still, it’s bigger in the back than the Renault 5 E-Tech, with a lot larger trunk.
The rear door handles are hidden in the window corners for production reasons, as it saves on stamping costs and helps to make the window the right size for rolling down.
Under The Hood
Volkswagen claims a max charging speed of 105kW at a DC station, which isn’t super great, but the battery can be pre-conditioned in the winter to keep charging speeds up.
The 37kWh battery cars will charge at a max speed of 90kW, but at least the smaller battery will be topped up quickly. That speed is around double compared to what earlier-generation 38kWh Hyundai Konas could manage, so you’re out on the road in half the time – and charging those Hyundais in winter was a real slog. AC charging is done at 11kW max, which is the usual fare these days.
The ID.Polo is a combination of VW doing a perfectly ordinary-looking Volkswagen hatchback and paying attention to enough of the neat small details, without overloading on gimmickry. Spec it right, paying attention to your wallet and daily driver requirements, and it’s likely to be a very likeable car in day-to-day driving. The base color for it is an attractive yellow called Python Yellow, which really helps the car stand out: there are enough fleet-spec white Volkswagens out there. The blue is fine, too.
The lessons learned from the ID.3 are likely to be that people just want a regular Golf-looking car, with a regular Golf dashboard, without having to pay for fuel. In other words, like the e-Golf, just with the EV stuff honed further. This shows in the new ID.Polo, which is pleasingly gimmick-free inside out: it’s just a Polo that’s electric. When VW finally makes an ID.Golf, there’s a lot hanging on it. If it’s anything like the ID.Polo, it’s looking good so far.
(Photos by author unless otherwise noted)
It even has (emulated) the 1980s VW’s led bulbs in square holes dashboard, I hope they do something and are not just there as decoration.
Must have been fun to design 🙂
I really liked that they were just raw LED bulbs, and not really lamps. Went well with the old VW idea of simplicity.
[ADDED] – Oh, it’s in the text that they don’t do anything. Sucks then… 🙁
For the true cheap Polo experience, one of the LEDs should glow dimly at times, just to worry you.
(Although after tens of thousands of miles in mine, I never worked out why it did that, it certainly didn’t seem to be an actual warning.)
Yes 😀 If range anxiety isn’t enough, they should program some random light ups, to keep drivers from dozing off from the otherwise numbing EV driving experience…
I’m interested in the Skoda Epiq for my wife’s round town kid running car. Not because it’s a quasi-crossover, but because in Skoda style, it’s halfway in size between the iD.Polo and the iD.3 so you get a bit more rear seat room and boot capacity.
I do wish the larger capacity battery was also LFP instead of NMC though.
“In Northern European countries, with the characteristic blend of cheap electricity and expensive gas”
Here in California, which likes to think it’s Euro adjacent, we can beat that with a one two punch of expensive gas AND expensive electricity!
Take that, you Euro smarties.
Meanwhile this Polo thing looks very appealing as someone who once rolled in diesel Rabbits back in the day. A small VW hatch is a great thing, and with electropower it’d be a great about town car.
Well, still the gas prices here in Europe are way higher…especially in Germany. Even electricity is rather expensive, if compared with the countries around us.
California expensive?
Average gas price: $6.60 per gallon (mid grade) = EUR 1.53 per litre
Netherlands: EUR 2.45 per litre (RON 95)
Residential electricity price: $0.35/kWh = EUR 0.31/kWh
Netherlands (current): EUR 0.28/kWh.
So… electricity prices are not that different. California gas prices are very cheap. Now, the Netherlands is one of the most expensive countries in Europe, but in Germany you’d still pay EUR 2.30 per litre or so.
Nah, Germany is currently more expensive. Depending on which sort you want, 2,45-2,60 Euro per Liter. Electricity depends on your contract. Somwhere between 0,25 to 0,35 € per kWh
These days a modern Polo is bigger than a Mk2 Golf
It’s really a great product, altough they should have called it golf as the size is same. It can also tow a bit unlike ID3, which is great. I hope they make a wagon and I think octavia wagon could be based on this.
Looks like a slam dunk in almost every way.
Range and charging speeds are merely adequate, which doesn’t totally future proof the product. But given the current competitive landscape, it’s probably fine.
At the end of the day, people buy small cars because they’re cheap. This will flop.
Not true outside of north America
This….
In Europe there has always been a high demand for this segment…and VW currently realizes this, looking at the numbers of orders for the ID Polo…
It is very true outside of North America. People in Europe may not want something Escalade-sized, but the fact is that people buy VW Polo’s because they’re more budget-friendly than a Golf while still offering a lot of the same characteristics.
That looks really cool. And 210hp in such a small hatchback is a lot. That’s Golf GTI power just slightly over a decade ago.
It’s at least four times the power of my first Polo.
Maybe five times because I doubt it had all 37 tiny German horsies left by the time I owned it.
The new ID Polo is ‘only’ twice the weight, so that’s a respectable doubling of power-to-weight.
this is such a rad little package.
VW wont do it.. but it would be awesome to see something like this with a bit more battery in the US market to compete with the Chevy Bolt, Nissan Leaf and Kia EV3.
Yeah, this is probably an under 200 mile highway EV, which is a bit of a non starter in the US (for good reason).
It also doesn’t have the DC charging speeds to offset that.
I would be psyched if we got this, the Renault 5, or the Inster here in the US.
Why’d you have to show us that Futura though, because now an EV of that is going to haunt my dreams. Lol
A smallish van on this platform would be nice.
I see van, I like. Maybe they can work with Citroen to make the ELO a reality.
Good job. This is what I think VW should be doing. This is the sort of EV I am interested in. I am also a fan of retro dials – when I rented a Mustang a few months ago I liked the retro options (OG, Fox, white backed 90s) more than the sport, track etc modern options.
Antti – small ask. Not sure where in Europe you are reporting from, but based on a quick lookup, I think it is fair to assume that the €26,390 starting price includes VAT/Sales Tax, which in most euro countries is North of 20%.
Would you mind including the before-tax prices in your articles when you talk about euro cars (I realize it sounds absurd to a European but would make the comparison easier for US audiences)?
Hey, if you remove the 25,5% of VAT embedded in the price the car costs a little under 20k euros, or $22,400.
An interesting thing is that from 2022 on, EVs haven’t had any import tax on them, so if you compare the price of the T-Cross, an outgoing Polo based crossover with a one-liter gasoline turbo engine, those have around 2,400 Euros of tax in the 26k Euro price as well as the VAT. Since car taxation is nowadays emissions based and cars have become “greener”, the import tax component has shrunk a lot. It used to form half of the car’s price, or more, which is why people used to try and benefit from various loopholes through the years. But now, if you buy an EV, you get a “tax free car” as long as you don’t worry about VAT or if you can deduct it in business taxation.
Thats interesting, thank you for the thorough update!
Its disappointing to read that in the retro display mode there is no singular green light which indicated both left AND right turns… That is the one thing I was looking forward to
I know which way I’m turning, why do I need the car to tell it to me?
Second thought, we probably aren’t too far from not knowing which way we are turning and needing the car to tell us.
One of my fav oddball things in my old Mk2 Golfs and Jettas was the little single green light in the gauge cluster for both left and right turns, the single blue light for high beams, one little red light for oil….pressure maybe? Who knows, it was obscure and all we needed.. Who needs a green arrow light for each direction? One green dot is just fine lol
There was a red one for the handbrake too (bottom right IIRC?)
So they finally get rid of the dumb haptic buttons, and then give us THIS?
WTF, VW?
You just have to find SOME way of fucking up the driver/car interface, don’t you?
The multi-function stalk for wipers on my ’11 Golf has a learning curve, but is very satisfyingly tactile. Every part has a different shape, so I’m never hunting for buttons or pushing the wrong one. Ditto for the cruise controls on the opposite stalk. From the pic, there’s one slider for front wipers, and another for rear wipers, with different shapes and oriented on different axes, so count me hopeful.
I would be tickled pink if VW ever got around to offering this (or the golf equivalent) in the US. And tickled tartan if they ever deigned to bring us the GTI variant, but I’m aware we can’t have nice things.
Wipers are a significant safety feature. They absolutely should not have a “learning curve”
Nor should any of the major features and functions.
When I get into a car I’m not familiar with I just check out the controls. Not rocket science izzit?
Looking at that picture, it’s not intuitive though.
How do I activate “flick wipe”, where one flick of the wiper stalk does a single wipe? If I do that on the combined stalk, I’ll be indicating with my turn signal.
How do I wash the windscreen? Normally you pull the wiper stalk towards the steering wheel. And you pull the indicator stalk towards the steering wheel to flash your high beams.
As they now share the same stalk, what function does pulling that stalk towards the steering wheel do? And how do I do the other function?
Preach brother! I’m right with you.
Maybe it’s not rocket science for you young whippersnappers, but for me I’ve sat puzzled in many a rental car trying to figure out how to do basic things like make it move.
Had to pull up a YouTube vid to put a Prius in drive once.
Ha ha ha, what a stupid old man!
Yeah yeah, I hear you.
But all these human interface designs were settled science until the car makers decided they had to run with the cool kids and frak up everything just to Think Different.
Thank the gods the Euro regulators, and even the Chinese, are pushing back on this modern tomfoolery. (It took the Euros to force Apple to embrace USB-C fer gods sake)
A recent trek to Denmark had me drooling over, well, a LOT of really nice but workmanlike hatches, and just a ton or EVs of all sorts.
They’re also using the VW ID.4 vans for all kinds of delivery/cargo applications.
This one wouldn’t necessarily stand out as being all that groundbreaking, but it’s nice, and the price seems fair enough.
Shame we Americans have crap people driving crap, overweight vehicles, but oh well.
Obviously what they do in a country of 6 million doesn’t really scale up to one with 342 million, but we could maybe try a little harder not to be such crap.
That is a fallacy that absolutely refuses to die, and has been used by anti-EV forces for years. Everything, can be scaled up. It happens all around us, all the time. You know what helps? If you’re not willing to help, get out of the way let those who have the vision for progress and change do the lifting. Start by reimplementing the IRA Act, and tripling it in size, with safeguards to prevent any politically motivated reversals.
More than willing to help, and I’ve taken to the streets plenty of times in recent years.
That said I’ve spent a good bit of time thinking about what’s needed to fix what’s FUBAR about this Republic and I’m pretty sure even tripling the IRA ain’t gone duit.
In Denmark the number of EVs on the road have already overtaken the number of diesel cars. It will most likely only be a couple of years before EVs outnumbers gas cars. We are a small country and used cars a often exported hence the fast growth of EV share.
EVs are close 100% of sales to private persons.
Anyway, they are all 10K euros too expensive. (or more)
small city cars should be in the 7/10K euro range, the largerish version should be in the 10/13K range.. the R5 and consort should be around 15K, and bigger stuff like a Megane should be in the 20/25K range… 30K and up should be for really premium cars, not for a daily driver, especially electric with somewhat limited range. (and having to deal with the mess of having various subscription to avoid paying over inflated price for cheap electricity)
I like your 2005 prices.
10k is about six months rent in some cities. But hey, at least our wages have increased too….oh, wait.
This would be perfect for getting around my fair city. Wish we had options like this.
The Bolt is cheaper and has more range.
And is not available in Europe
True but Europe has plenty of other options for small and cheap EVs.
I’m guessing Get an E-Bike is does not live in Europe as he wishes he had options like the Polo. I’d say he lived in the USA and if his reference to “my fair city” matches the old “Car Talk” show he might be in Boston / Cambridge. (I was just there and a small car would be very helpful but an E-Bike likely faster)