Volkswagen is no stranger to bring test fleet units to the South African market in bid to ‘test the waters’ before deciding on whether or not they will bring the units to our market – the most notable being the eGolf that was being tested by various media and dealerships in between 2022 and 2023.

This time around, the manufacture has made available their flagship electric vehicle by bringing the ID.4 SUV available for media and prospective buyers before opening up sales to the general public.
Whereas the eGolf was build off the basis of the Golf 7, the ID.4 is a brand new vehicle that the brand is introducing into their electric vehicle range – and it would be interesting to see how if fares in our market, considering the few hurdles that we still face today. One of which is support from our Government in terms of incentives for manufactures where electric vehicles are concerned.

The exterior of the vehicle certainly stands out from the ‘regular’ brand vehicles and one can distinguish it on the open roads, with the ever so popular ‘closed’ front-grill making it obvious that this is an electric vehicle.
The ID.4 has a 77kWh battery that packs a range of approximately 531KM’s on a single charge, has a rear-motor setup that puts out 150kW at 310Nm of torque. The battery has an acclaimed 5% – 80% charge time of 38 minutes on a DC-fast charging unit at that.
All these numbers being acclaimed at the moment, although it would be key to see how the car performs in the real world as it is being tested in our market.

The reason why VW is doing this pre-longed media launch is generally to not only test the vehicles with regards to our market but also to showcase the car to prospective buys, in a bid to roll out large numbers in terms of units and also to try rope in our Government to meet the brands half-way in terms of support for electric vehicles. These steps would arguable make it easier for South Africans to make to complete move to EV’s, knowing that they not have an incentivised support but also adequate infrastructure to support this move.
Seemingly the ‘soft-launch’ will also give the brand to roll out future updates and changes before committing to a definite launch onto our markets as the ID.4 and ID.5 have already seen a few updates being rolled out to the current models in terms of a brand new generation of infotainment system and software enhancements – a great move by Volkswagen.