Photo: S. Baldauf/SB-Medien | Edited
Volkswagen will reshuffle its naming scheme for the EV era with the best-selling Tiguan and the Golf nameplates retained under the ID. range of electric vehicles. The German carmaker confirmed that the electric ID.Tiguan will arrive in showrooms as early as 2026, thus preceding Project Trinity.
A year ago, Volkswagen looked to be one of the few legacy carmakers understanding the EV future. Its ID. range of electric vehicles looked good, despite early software setbacks, and sales were starting to ramp up. Volkswagen’s former CEO, Herbert Diess, may have had his quirks and annoyed the hell out of the company’s board, but he understood electric vehicles. Volkswagen’s strategy is less clear under Oliver Blume, who looks like he’s trying to patch up the carmaker’s future with half-baked solutions.
Blume all but scrapped the Trinity Project and scaled down Volkswagen’s ambitious EV plans. Instead of a new EV-only architecture, he announced a revamped MEB+ to carry the company’s EV plans into the future. The ID. EV lineup is also a mess now, as Volkswagen moves away from the initial plans to spin it into a sub-brand and possibly IPO it into a separate company. Instead, Volkswagen is planning to mingle the ID. names with its classic nameplates.
This has been revealed at a works council at Volkswagen’s Wolfsburg headquarters. According to Handelsblatt, Volkswagen will build an electric SUV similar in size and style to the company’s best-selling Tiguan. The SUV, expected to be unveiled in 2025 and start sales in 2026, will be based on the revamped MEB+ electric architecture. There’s nothing new here since Volkswagen already announced this plan in December after Blume took the helm of the group and Thomas Schaefer was named Volkswagen brand CEO.
What is new is that the new model, which might be named ID.Tiguan, will fill the gap left in the market by delaying the Trinity project. The 2026 timeframe corresponds with the end of life of the current Tiguan generation, which will have its mid-life refresh introduced later this year. Although initially planned with at least another generation as an ICE vehicle, the Tiguan will join the ranks of the ID.4 and ID.5 as an electric vehicle.
The move might have been accelerated by the phasing out of combustion vehicles by 2035 in Europe, although Volkswagen pledged to make a move even earlier, in 2033. Although ID.Tiguan name sounds awful, Volkswagen management has indicated before that they intend to capitalize on its iconic nameplates like Golf and Tiguan and reuse them for future electric vehicles. It’s also quite possible that the ID. branding to disappear altogether.
This appears to be supported by a rumored change of name for the affordable ID.2. Volkswagen wanted it to be the sub-$25,000 EV that would democratize electric vehicles in Europe. Nevertheless, new insider information relayed by Autocar indicates that Volkswagen will use the ID.Golf name instead. This is a little confusing since the Golf is roughly the same size as the ID.3. The ID.Golf should also be based on the MEB+ architecture and use an LFP battery to keep costs down.
It appears that Volkswagen needs to clean its naming mess as soon as possible. It would be hard for customers to discern between ID.2, ID.3, and ID.Golf and the same is likely to happen for the ID.4/ID.5 and ID.Tiguan. Based on this, we wouldn’t rule out an ID.Passat alongside the ID.7 saloon in the future.
Blume all but scrapped the Trinity Project and scaled down Volkswagen’s ambitious EV plans. Instead of a new EV-only architecture, he announced a revamped MEB+ to carry the company’s EV plans into the future. The ID. EV lineup is also a mess now, as Volkswagen moves away from the initial plans to spin it into a sub-brand and possibly IPO it into a separate company. Instead, Volkswagen is planning to mingle the ID. names with its classic nameplates.
This has been revealed at a works council at Volkswagen’s Wolfsburg headquarters. According to Handelsblatt, Volkswagen will build an electric SUV similar in size and style to the company’s best-selling Tiguan. The SUV, expected to be unveiled in 2025 and start sales in 2026, will be based on the revamped MEB+ electric architecture. There’s nothing new here since Volkswagen already announced this plan in December after Blume took the helm of the group and Thomas Schaefer was named Volkswagen brand CEO.
What is new is that the new model, which might be named ID.Tiguan, will fill the gap left in the market by delaying the Trinity project. The 2026 timeframe corresponds with the end of life of the current Tiguan generation, which will have its mid-life refresh introduced later this year. Although initially planned with at least another generation as an ICE vehicle, the Tiguan will join the ranks of the ID.4 and ID.5 as an electric vehicle.
The move might have been accelerated by the phasing out of combustion vehicles by 2035 in Europe, although Volkswagen pledged to make a move even earlier, in 2033. Although ID.Tiguan name sounds awful, Volkswagen management has indicated before that they intend to capitalize on its iconic nameplates like Golf and Tiguan and reuse them for future electric vehicles. It’s also quite possible that the ID. branding to disappear altogether.
This appears to be supported by a rumored change of name for the affordable ID.2. Volkswagen wanted it to be the sub-$25,000 EV that would democratize electric vehicles in Europe. Nevertheless, new insider information relayed by Autocar indicates that Volkswagen will use the ID.Golf name instead. This is a little confusing since the Golf is roughly the same size as the ID.3. The ID.Golf should also be based on the MEB+ architecture and use an LFP battery to keep costs down.
It appears that Volkswagen needs to clean its naming mess as soon as possible. It would be hard for customers to discern between ID.2, ID.3, and ID.Golf and the same is likely to happen for the ID.4/ID.5 and ID.Tiguan. Based on this, we wouldn’t rule out an ID.Passat alongside the ID.7 saloon in the future.
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