670 horsepower and 0-60 in 2.2 seconds: The Volkswagen I.D. R Pikes Peak
Volkswagen
They say there's none so zealous as a fresh convert. The fallout from dieselgate saw Volkswagen find religion in electrification, and the automaker sure is embracing it. Last year, now-departed VW Group Chairman Matthias Mi1/4ller revealed Roadmap E, which commits the company to electrifying its entire lineup by 2030. It is building networks of 350kW DC chargers. In Europe that's happening with other OEMs; here in the US it's doing it alone (revealing on Monday that Target and Sheetz, among others, will join 100 Walmarts in the network). It has locked in $25 billion of batteries for European- and Chinese-market battery electric vehicles (BEVs), and barely an auto show goes by without the reveal of yet another BEV under the I.D. sub-brand. The first of these will go on sale in 2020, with the microbus that everyone drools over coming in 2022.
But one I.D. electric car will hit the street a little sooner. Well, one particular street-the strip of road that runs up to the top of Pikes Peak in Colorado. Volkswagen will use this year's Pikes Peak International Hill Climb both to stress test its new BEV platform and-if driver Romain Dumas sets a new EV record-to make some headlines. In March we saw a couple of renders of the I.D. R Pikes Peak, but on Sunday at Alis in France, it finally gave us our first look at the real thing.
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