The first road tests of the Volkswagen ID.3 electric car are showing up

Enlarge / It's a shame that the Volkswagen ID.3 won't be imported to the US. (credit: Volkswagen)

One of the many things that COVID-19 has laughed at were our plans to try out Volkswagen's all-new electric car platform. If the virus hadn't come along to wreck everyone's year, we'd already have spent a few miles getting to know the ID.3, the first in a series of battery electric vehicles which will all use VW's new MEB (Modularer E-Antriebs-Baukasten, or Modular Electrification Toolkit) architecture.

But the virus did happen, and Europe shut its borders to inhabitants of Plaguesville, USA. So we'll have to rely on third-party reports of this new electric people's car, a model that had been stuck in software development quicksand but which is now about to begin customer deliveries in Europe.

Reports come from people like Jonny Smith, who got to spend a couple of hours with a production ID.3 in and around VW's home town of Wolfsburg. Smith got to try out the "first edition" of the ID.3, which uses the midsize 56kWh battery pack to achieve a WLTP-rated range of 260 miles (418km):

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