VW Beetle could resurface as pure EV, report states
And it could even be rear-wheel drive! Purists, rejoice... sort of.
Volkswagen's MEB platform will underpin a wide swath of future electric vehicles from the VW brand. One new report claims that a familiar face could very well make an appearance in the future.
Volkswagen is considering reviving the Beetle on the MEB platform as a proper battery-electric vehicle, Autocar reports, citing an interview with VW design chief Klaus Bischoff. The interview didn't exactly confirm the existence of a new electric Beetle, but Bischoff didn't exactly shrug off the idea, either.
"Our duty is to get the volume [I.D.] models under way," Bischoff told Autocar. "These cars have super-complicated technology and if you do too much, it's an overload. Then we [can] move into more exotic cars and the field of emotion."
That "field of emotion" is referring to vehicles meant to captivate rather than serve solely as traditional methods of transportation. The first VW to align with this ideology will be the I.D. Buzz microbus, which is slated for release as a 2022 model, although we've already driven a prototype. The vehicles that come before it, including the I.D. hatchback and the I.D. Crozz crossover, will act more like your everyday transportation, although based on the designs of its concepts, I'd call them captivating, too, although maybe not as much as a microbus.
The way VW is engineering its EVs allows for this sort of flexibility. The MEB platform is built from the ground up to be a platform for future battery-electric vehicles both large and small. Bischoff said a Beetle would be feasible even in the platform's smallest iteration, and that he'd already sketched up an idea of what it could look like. It could even be rear-wheel drive, which the platform can accommodate. Alas, Autocar said it would take "two or three years" before a decision of approval would take place, so don't expect that electric Beetle any time soon. A Volkswagen spokesman declined to comment on the speculation to Roadshow.
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