Volkswagen's ID concept is the future of small German cars. Maybe.

[NOISE] Meet the future, this according to Volkswagen is the kind of car the likes of you and I will be driving to go around our daily lives. First it was the beetle then there was the golf, and soon There will be the ID. The ID concept was launched at the 2016 Paris Motorshow, showing off the next step in Volkswagen's evolution. The cars of the future will do away with the internal combustion engine and go all electric. And VW wants to be at the coal face, for want of a better word As early as possible. [BLANK_AUDIO] Unlike Tesla VW's first proper EV isn't a silly sports car, or a sedan with a zillion horse power, instead it's a family hatchback with plenty of space, a decent range, 249 to 373 miles, and A sensible price tag. VW says the ID has a dizzying 168 rate horsepower and can get from naut to 62 in sub 8 seconds. And that it'll top out a 99 miles an hour. It's also designed for space and comfort, so this four seats, likely five in a production car. A wheel that tucks away nicely if you use the concept cars imaginary fully autonomous mode. Making initial id's for your autonomous would be too expensive for VW's taste but semi autonomous tech is most certain to appear. As this is An electric car, there's no need for a motor or anything like that which means the front is closed off and a set of rather delightful LED headlamps are nestled just below the surface. They are quite smart. When it's in autonomous mode, it tells pedestrians what it's doing and whether they are safe to cross, and things like that. It also means that all the space that would be for transmission tunnels and stuff like that, can be freed up for people and. Things. The production car is based on a new platform, NEB, for VW's electric vehicles. It sandwiches the car's lithium-ion batteries in the car's floor, so the center of gravity is low and there's no space penalty for having a power source on board with you. In 2020, when the production car appears, it will sit alongside the Golf However VW's pretty adamant that the EVID is pretty much the way to go, but that's kind of the thing with VW it's always been looking after it's people, and it all started with a concept to get Germany moving from it's inception in the 1930's. This is a Beetle. You know it's a Beetle cuz it's one of the most distinctive looking cars on the planet. Originally designed to be a cheap car for the people, or Volkswagen. The Beetle was the brain child of a certain Mr. Hitler who wanted his people to be able to travel freely on Germany's road network. He called up a chap called Ferdinand Porsche to design it. You came up with a rear wheel drive, rear engine car that became known as the Beatle. Initially the car needed to hit a top speed of 72 miles an hour and use less than 7 litres of fuel per 100 kilometers. And it had to be cheap and easy to fix. The people needed to travel, not go into debt fixing their motor. Production really didn't start in earnest until after World War II. Thanks to British Major, Ivan Hirst, the heavily bombed VW factory was brought back to life, because of him, and the rest is history, kinda. By the 1970s the Beetle was in decline, technology had It moved on, and the time came for VW to do the same. In 1974, the Golf appeared. It was once called a front wheel drive, and crucially, a better car for the masses. It was, and still is widely popular. And it's credited with inventing the hot hatch even though it didn't, really. Still, it's been run for ages, and kicks all kinds of ****. It was a turning point for VW, just as they hope. The ID will be. From day one, the Volkswagen has been there providing the best it can. The Beetle was designed to get people moving. And then when the Beetle became obsolete, then was the Golf. And next this, the ID. Now, with my limited time with the concept, here's what it's like to drive. I'm gonna have to keep this brief, because this is one of the single most nerve wracking drives I've ever done. I've driven C types everything, but this is worth more than all of them combined. And yeah. [BLANK_AUDIO] So we've been given just a little bit of road just to play on. And it's quite interesting to see, really, because this has been designed really to drive up to a stage and then drive off it very slowly. So the throttle mapping is A little bit dicey, and sometimes the car starts to shake a little bit, and sometimes that means you just gotta give it a little bit more go. [SOUND] It's very sparse in here, but there's so much space, and so much light Admittedly, there's nothing like a stereo or anything like that. But this is around the size of a Golf, yet it feels so much bigger. And the cool thing is when you need to change gear, it's all little [UNKNOWN] buttons on the bottom of the steering wheel. And you just press your finger over it and off you go. It's so impressive, this thing. It is also a little bit terrifying because it's quite wobbly because, of course, this is a hand-built one-off Concept car which makes some noises than can be a little bit unnerving. However, the little instrument [UNKNOWN] down here shows me everything I need, the steering's light, I can see out of it, and when it's behaving itself, it feels fantastic. It's top speed currently is 25 kilometers per hour, which feels just plenty enough For me. So, visibility wise, as well as the massive gloss out, so I can see out of it so easily. My rearview mirror is a camera. My wing mirrors are cameras. And also there's little cameras where the B pillars would be. Now that's the autonomous stuff that the concept is supposed to have. Now, the concept car, you press a, you press the VW badge on the wheel and it syncs and the car will drive itself. That's not how this one actually Actually works because this is just a concept. And you see those little discs at the top? Those also read the road and read people, and it's a nice way of integrating the autonomous text, something that can be quite bulky to make it look kind of cool and an integral part of the car. Yes this is a concept which means it's a bit wobbly, it's Not the quickest in the world and things aren't 100%, but this really is a statement of intent. This is showing what VW will bring in the future and, you know what, I'm really excited. [BLANK_AUDIO]