VW now offering 48-hour e-Golf test drives in the UK
It could help reduce e-Golf stockpiles ahead of the ID 3's launch.
With a brand spankin' new electric hatchback soon to arrive, Volkswagen is ramping up its efforts to get people to embrace electrification, and its latest scheme should both accomplish that and help shore up some leftover supply for its outgoing EV.
Volkswagen announced late last week that it will start offering extended test drives in the UK. These flexible test drives are, in essence, 48-hour loans that start and end at the dealership. In those 48 hours, though, people are free to do whatever, so long as they don't leave the e-Golf dead by the side of the road or something equally silly.
It's a smart idea from an adoption perspective. You can theorycraft all you want about how well an electric vehicle will or won't fit into your lifestyle, but you'll never know for sure until you give it a whirl, and this allows everyone that opportunity without requiring an actual purchase. If it turns out the e-Golf's 144-mile range (by Europe's WLTP standard) fits into your life, there you go.
It's also likely a clever move that will help VW push remaining e-Golf stock through its doors. The car will become all but irrelevant when the ID 3 electric hatchback launches in mid-2020. With its shortest-range battery offering about 205 miles of range (again, by WLTP measurements) and its longest stretching north of 340 miles, the ID 3 has been built from the start as an EV, as opposed to the e-Golf, which runs on a variant of the MQB platform.
The ID 3 is already forming a line. According to the automaker, it has now received more than 20,000 preorders for the ID 3, and it hopes to push that number to 30,000 by the Frankfurt Motor Show in September.
