There will be no Electric Volkswagens sold in South Africa, at least not until 2022. If you ask me, that is too long of a wait. Instead, Volkswagen has plans to slowly introduce electric cars and for good reason. South Africa does not have the biggest market for fully electric cars, neither does it have the infrastructure to support a lot of these cars.
Volkswagen has a 3-stage plan for electric cars
And it starts with the e-Golf. It’s exactly what it sounds like, an electric version of the Volkswagen Golf. If you are lucky, you might see one driving around in 2020. The only way to tell you are looking at the electric version is some blue striping, and the unique alloy wheels designed to reduce drag.
“At Volkswagen, we want to democratize electric mobility and that is why the e-Golf pilot project is a key initiative for the brand. With the help of our dealers, we want to get as many South Africans as possible to drive and experience an electric vehicle as this is the future of our brand,” said Mike Glendinning, Sales and Marketing Director for Volkswagen Group South Africa.
It’s not worth getting upsetting when we hear that this car won’t be sold in South Africa. This is because it’s immediately going to be replaced by the new Golf 8. It also won’t be Volkswagens electric car going forward as the ID.3 has that title.
We just mentioned it, stage-2 is the ID.3
This is and will be Volkswagen’s electric car. This one does make me sad to hear that they won’t be sold in South Africa anytime soon. However, there is some solace in the fact that there will be a lot more of them around. In 2021, VW intends to have a whole fleet of these driving around our roads.
You can see a little bit of the Golf in this car, but its design sets it well apart from any other VW we’ve seen before. Since this is a real electric car, the nose is a lot shorter with an incredibly smooth design. One thing it doesn’t have are cameras, rather normal wing mirrors. This is just one of the ways Volkswagen has made this car more affordable.
Stage-3 will have fully electric Volkswagens for sale
In 2022, Volkswagen plan to have full production and sales of all their electric cars. While the e-Golf and the ID.3 will not be sold in South Africa, there are next generation’s versions of the ID.3 including a saloon, SUV and a camper van.
It sounds like Volkswagen has a very exciting future planned, it’s just unfortunate that it can’t happen any sooner. With a little luck, projects like these will bring more facilities for electric cars around South Africa and we will be silently driving around in no time.