Volkswagen ID.8 Announced: The Atlas Is Going Electric

Jul. 16, 2021 1:31 PM ET by Sebastian Cenizo Electric Vehicles / 2 Comments

The ID.8 will be the biggest in the range.

Volkswagen has stated that it intends to totally dominate the global EV market. It has high-performance GTX models in the pipeline, launched the ID.6 seven-seater SUV, and is working on an electric bus called the ID.Buzz. But there's lots more to come.

In a recent post on LinkedIn, Volkswagen AG's Chairman of the Board of Management, Herbert Diess, shared his speech from the presentation of the New Auto strategy. Basically, this speech outlines exactly how Volkswagen plans to take over the world, but hidden in the speech are some specifics that we had not learned about until now. Most interestingly, we now know that Volkswagen is working on an Atlas-sized electric SUV, to be called the ID.8.

On page 10 of the document, pictured above, we learn that the ID range will be made up of five core models, from which we expect future variants to spawn. The ID.8 will be the electric Atlas, while the ID.3 is considered the Golf of the range, the ID.4 and ID.5 are Tiguan-sized, the T7 relates to the aforementioned ID.Buzz, and the ID.6 sedan represents the electric Passat. Sadly, no further details can be gleaned from the document, but the fact that the details have been made public indicates that we can expect teaser campaigns and prototype testing to begin shortly.

That being said, it does appear that the ID.8 will be a global vehicle, so we should reasonably expect to see it arrive in the States at some point. With an electric version of all of its most important existing models, Volkswagen says it will have "the most comprehensive EV product portfolio in the industry yet", and we see no reason to doubt that.

VW wants to be the world's "EV leader by 2025", so we do at least know that all of these new electric offerings will launch before then. We look forward to seeing what Tesla and the rest of the industry come up with in response.