Since then, we haven’t seen many cars able to compare or compete. Sure, there have been a lot of affordable small cars, but the Beetle was special. Volkswagen may now be working on a 2020s Beetle, an electric one. The company is working on a €20,000 super affordable EV, and it wrote about that yesterday in a news release on the matter.
We don’t know much about it yet. It will be shown early next month. But Volkswagen is aiming big. Thomas Schäfer, CEO of the Volkswagen Passenger Cars brand, described is as: “An affordable, high-quality, and profitable electric Volkswagen from Europe for Europe — that’s the Champions League of automotive engineering!” Note that this is not the ID. 2all, but in addition to it — and even cheaper. Could it be an electric Beetle? Well, given the preview image, that seems highly unlikely … but it seems like it will be in spirit. Like the Beetle before it, it will be a simple, super affordable car. Could it be one of the icons of a new revolution?
At the least, maybe it can rise up from being the 7th best selling plugin vehicle brand in the world.
Below is Volkswagen’s full news release from yesterday on the car.
At today’s works meeting in Wolfsburg, Thomas Schäfer, CEO of the Volkswagen Passenger Cars brand, presented plans for the future of the core brand. Employees also had a first glimpse of the design of the Volkswagen brand’s future entry-level electric model at a price of about €20,000. “With the conclusion of negotiations in December, we set the largest future plan in Volkswagen’s history in motion. We are pursuing an ambitious path to ensure we achieve our shared goals with full commitment. A key step in this is making e-mobility attractive for everyone — that is our brand promise,” said Schäfer. At the same time, the Volkswagen brand CEO emphasized that Wolfsburg would remain the center for innovation and production competence. He said that the main plant would set new standards in automobile production.
Volkswagen plans to present the show car for the new entry-level model to the public at the beginning of March. The world premiere of the production model is scheduled for 2027. With a base price of about €20,000, the new entry-level electric model will be attractive for a wide variety of user groups. Schäfer: “An affordable, high-quality, and profitable electric Volkswagen from Europe for Europe – that’s the Champions League of automotive engineering!”
Daniela Cavallo, Chairwoman of the General and Group Works Council of Volkswagen AG: “The new all-electric entry-level model will be a Volkswagen in the genuine sense of the term. It is therefore appropriate that our employees at the Wolfsburg plant will be the first to have a preview of the design — before the general public.”
Low-cost entry-level mobility in the electric era will be one of the cornerstones of the brand’s future plan. Together with the production version of the ID. 2all26, the new electric model is part of the new electric small car family developed under the umbrella of the Brand Group Core within the Volkswagen Group. The model family includes compact all electric vehicles based on the new stage in the evolution of the modular electric drive (MEB) platform. The first new model will be the production version of the ID. 2all show car, which is to reach dealerships in 2026 as Volkswagen’s first all-electric small car — at a base price of less than €25,000.
Volkswagen is already well positioned in the field of all-electric battery electric vehicles (BEV). Since the launch of the ID. product family in 2019, the brand has sold a total of more than 1.35 million ID. vehicles throughout the world, including about 500,000 ID.3. Last year, the Volkswagen brand sold 383,100 all-electric vehicles.
Clear perspective for the Wolfsburg plant
At the works meeting, brand CEO Thomas Schäfer emphasized that the Wolfsburg plant would remain the heart of the Volkswagen brand in the electric age: “The Wolfsburg plant has a clear future ahead. By relocating Golf production to Mexico, we are creating space for modern technologies. New production processes will be introduced in Hall 54. Our goal is to build the next-generation electric Golf on the new SSP platform there, along with the high-volume electric T-Roc. This will establish Wolfsburg as the capital of our new all-electric compact class”
The Scalable Systems Platform (SSP) will represent the next generation of an all-electric, fully digitalized, highly scalable mechatronics platform based on a uniform system architecture.
Cavallo: “Wolfsburg, the heart of the Group world, will face crucial tasks that we will need to tackle with determination. Technical Development will be performing pioneering work for all the other passenger car brands with the SSP platform, which will be used throughout the Group. This lever will be just as important for our future success as our platform strategy for our current ICE models. At our main plant, we will not only be working on development but also producing strongly over the next few years. The future electric flagships – the Golf and the T-Roc produced in Wolfsburg – currently represent a volume in excess of 500,000 units per year. The main plant has therefore secured a highly attractive vehicle segment and will be continuing the tradition of the Golf from Wolfsburg, which has a history of more than 50 years. It will now be crucial to work consistently on the preparations required for success in the years to come. Volkswagen must set the course in terms of complexity, work procedures and synergy effects. The Works Council and top management will cooperate closely on these developments. Our cooperation will include a joint progress meeting every quarter.”
The Volkswagen brand’s “triple A” plan: accelerate, attack and achieve
With the “Zukunft Volkswagen“ (Future Volkswagen) agreement, Volkswagen AG agreed with employee representatives at the end of December 2024 on a vision for the future combining economic stability, employment and technology leadership in the field of sustainable mobility. Binding targets and the measures agreed to reach them lay the foundation for projects in the future. The jointly agreed goal is for the Volkswagen Passenger Cars brand, as the core of Volkswagen AG, to become the technologically leading volume manufacturer globally by 2030.
For this purpose, Volkswagen has adopted an ambitious three-stage plan:
Catch up: competitiveness is to be strengthened by optimizing cost structures and extending the existing model portfolio in a targeted way.
Attack: There will be nine new models by 2027 including the production version of the ID.2all for less than €25,000 and the entry-level electric car for about €20,000.
Lead: as the technologically leading brand in the volume segment, Volkswagen is setting new standards and forging ahead with mobility throughout the world.
