VW will not produce the ID. Buggy

The ID. Buggy that Volkswagen presented last year will remain a concept. It seems VW has decided not to produce the fun EV itself after the planned co-production with e.GO mobile fell through due to the latter’s solvency issues.

As the magazine auto motor und sport claims to have learned from company circles, VW was aiming to have the electric beach buggy built by the small EV maker e.GO Mobile in Aachen but is now missing a production site owing to the financial problems experienced by the latter. As reported, e.GO Mobile filed an application for a protective shielding procedure in April – a special form of insolvency under its administration. VW will not produce the ID Buggy itself: “We only do mass production,” a VW manager told the magazine. e.GO Mobile has not yet issued a statement.

The ID. Buggy was to be based on the MEB and use a lot of the drive technology familiar from the ID.3 – for example, the 150 kW electric motor in the rear and the 62 kWh battery (58 kWh net), which is also installed in the ID.3 of the 1st Edition. However, the construction of the passenger cell and also the chassis would have required other components, which would probably not have been worthwhile for VW given the expected low numbers of units for the recreational vehicle.

During the presentation of the ID. Buggy at the Geneva Motor Show in March 2019 it was being said that the Aachen-based e.GO Mobile AG was planning “a concrete vehicle project” with the MEB. “I am delighted that e.GO has become the first partner to use our electric platform as the basis for a jointly-defined vehicle project,” said Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess about the cooperation at the time.

As auto motor und sport further reports, VW has also eliminated the first combustion engine models from its production plan: The Golf Sportsvan (formerly Golf Plus), for example, will not be given a successor with the new technology of the Golf 8. The Golf with the higher body was produced in Zwickau, but VW has now converted the plant for the production of MEB electric cars. Given the declining demand for vans, VW does not want to go to the effort of integrating the sports van production into another plant.

auto-motor-und-sport.de (in German)