Here’s How Much Electric Car $30,000 Buys You In Europe

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)