GARAGE

May 08, 2024 17 minutes

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Volkswagen ID.3

HELLO

£37,430 OTR/£42,880 as tested/£435 pcm

WHY IT’S HERE

Is the revised ID.3 easier to live with?

DRIVER

Paul Horrell

I HAD A VOLKSWAGEN ID.4 A YEAR OR TWO BACK. NOT THROUGH CHOICE: it was too bulky for my taste and felt it, and it had the cumbersome early manifestation of the Volkswagen twin screen interface. But early ID.3s had their issues too, notably impoverished-feeling cabin materials and – what was it again? – oh yes, that infotainment interface.

Well here we are with a MkI-and-a-bit version of the ID.3. Its facelift is comparatively mild, but inside the plastics have been improved and the screen system is better (although not as good as the ID.7’s). It runs faster, is more configurable and many of its worst solipsisms have been excised.

This particular ID.3 started life at £37,430 then added a £1,725 exterior pack (matrix headlamps, tinted rear glass), 19-inch wheels at £1,120, and keyless entry with rearview camera for £985, plus stuff like mats, two-level boot floor and bike carrier preparation. Two-tone paint is another £885. A heat pump is an option not fitted. Yet the car still costs nearly £43k. Gulp. This facelift trim version is now replaced by Match trim, where the same thing would be more than £4k less.

I’ve done just one charge cycle so far. The new software has a much better guess-o-meter. From 100 per cent to 11 per cent was 177 miles for an extrapolated range of 199 miles (177/0.89 is 199) and now I’ve recharged it tells me I have 198 miles to go. The ID.4 never learned.

This is the small battery ID.3 with 58kWh. I drove those 177 miles in cold weather in a hurry, a significant portion on motorway, and it took more than six hours. I can’t go that long between toilet stops and a car that needs topping up as often as its driver needs draining down seems a sensible prospect now that public chargers are closely spaced. The ID.3 is also notably more effcient than the ID.4, which got about 3.4mpkWh against 3.7 for this first cold weather cycle.