VW completely changes the design style. Instead of boredom, he bets on courage, he wants to meet the biggest market in the world

VW’s new products of recent years do not inspire much desire, as they rely only on electric drive, and they are not twice as visually attractive. The new direction set by the ID.Code concept changes at least the latter.

In 1984, i.e. 40 long years ago, Volkswagen entered into a partnership with the Chinese car manufacturer SAIC. On its basis, a year later, the Germans began to introduce their first cars to the world’s largest market, achieving a modest 1,684 sales. Eight years later, they managed to surpass the goal of 100,000 cars for the first time in order to conquer another milestone in 2010, namely one million cars sold within twelve months. Only six years after that, registrations even doubled, but in the last four years the Germans began to suffer. And they also came to the post of the Chinese number one.

No wonder it happened, VW rested on its laurels. For a long time, the Chinese clientele only wanted foreign cars, because domestic production was not worth anything. After all, these manufacturers figured this out when they tried to expand outside their homeland. Unlike VW, however, they did not fold their hands in their lap, but hired renowned designers and technicians. With their help, they started to score points with the production, which perhaps still did not have such sophisticated technology, but managed to appeal with design, equipment, digitization and, above all, price.

In addition, even the newly established brands managed to better understand the desires of customers than VW, which simply failed to adapt to the new era in time. The Chinese clientele does not place as much emphasis on propulsion as it does in Europe. Instead, he wants to slowly rotate cars like socks. Local manufacturers enable them to do this, as they pack the same technology into a different body slowly every year. In addition, they also keep the original versions in the menu, they just make them significantly cheaper. Their market share is thus constantly growing, precisely at the expense of VW.

At the same time, the threat is getting bigger, so the Germans took advantage of the ongoing Beijing motor show to announce a new strategy and present a new design style. By 2030, they want to come up with thirty new products that feature internal combustion, plug-in hybrid or electric drives. The ID family is expected to have 16 members by the end of the decade, five of which will fall under the new ID.UX sub-brand. It will focus on a young clientele, which it wants to appeal to with a progressive design, an interior focused on drivers and a favorable price.

VW wants to achieve the latter by not only building its new models on the MQB and MEB platforms, but also reaching for the architecture created in cooperation with Chinese brands. The first one, in which Xpeng is involved, is due to arrive in 2026. In addition, the automaker is also developing its own platform, which will be dedicated only to the Chinese market. Apparently, it will be a simpler technique that will be intended for at least four basic electric cars.

So that the Germans did not stop at words, they also came up with the first example of a car cut in accordance with the new design style. The ID.Code concept has also arrived in Shanghai, the exterior of which can be given a thumbs up. Compared to the current ID, it finally has some flair and is relatively bold by the standards of the brand, although from a wider perspective it is nothing that exceptional. If you cover the VW logo with your finger, we have a car that could be decorated with the emblem of almost any manufacturer, but that’s how it goes these days.

The carmaker has not yet revealed much about the technology used, only confirming that it is an electric car, which is not really surprising today. He should then place great emphasis on autonomous driving. But whether it will be the indicated SAE4 level depends on the speed of development. Understandably, the concept does not have to emphasize reality in this regard, in its case, VW allowed the steering wheel to slide into the dashboard after pressing the appropriate button. The front seats can then be turned 180 degrees, after which, in combination with the rear seats, two beds are created inside. The car is then supposed to communicate with the crew using artificial intelligence, while it intends to welcome them using a small screen under the front bumper, where the weather forecast can also appear.

Only time will tell if VW will catch current trends better with this. And actually it will not only be about that, the key will be how much the production cars inspired by this study deviate from their prototype. It wouldn’t be the first time that a bombastic concept was followed by another unimaginative production car at Volkswagen.

VW ID.Code finally looks attractive, moreover, it is full of interesting ideas, whether it is the weather forecast presented on the screen under the front bumper, the photovoltaic roof that slightly improves the range or the interior, where the front seats can be turned 180 degrees thanks to autonomous driving. But what of it will make it into production and for what money is the question. Photo: Volkswagen

Source: Volkswagen

Petr Prokopec

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