The new Volkswagen ID Polo GTI will live up to its fabled badge by being “a sports car you can use every day”, according to the firm’s technical chief.
The hot hatch is based on the recently revealed ID Polo EV and marks the first time that Volkswagen has applied its most famous performance badge – introduced 50 years ago on the Scirocco and Golf – to an electric car.
The ID Polo GTI gets 223bhp from a single front-mounted electric motor (which revs to 15,000rpm), can hit 62mph in 6.8sec and has a top speed of 109mph.
While that’s relatively modest compared with many modern electric cars, Volkswagen claims that’s because its focus wasn’t all-out performance but designing “a hot hatch in the best sense”. Therefore most attention was paid to how the car drives, handles and feeds back.
The ID Polo GTI features a bespoke chassis set-up, sitting on new, stiffer dampers and springs (which are adaptable). It incorporates the locking differential and anti-roll bar from the Golf GTI into the standard ID Polo’s MacPherson-strut front end and gains a special twist beam at the rear.
Indeed, Volkswagen’s head of driving dynamics, Florian Umbach, has told Autocar that he and his team are especially proud of that rear axle, with its mountings and bushings cleverly designed to allow some longitudinal ‘ride’ compliance but keeping lateral axle location much more closely controlled.
“It’s the best twist beam I think we’ve ever made,” he told Autocar during a prototype test drive last month.
With driver engagement in mind, the ID Polo GTI also gains a dedicated driving mode. Activated via a large GTI button at the base of the steering wheel, this ramps up all the drive and chassis settings to their most extreme, while an artificial combustion engine noise is pumped into the cabin. Activating GTI mode also allows for launch control to be used.
The ID Polo GTI sits on the same MEB+ platform as the standard ID Polo and uses the largest available battery, of 52kWh capacity and nickel-manganese-cobalt chemistry.
Its more performance-focused nature, however, cuts maximum range from 283 to 263 miles.
Like the standard car, it accepts a maximum DC charging speed of 105kW, enabling a 10-80% refill in 24 minutes.
The ID Polo joins a small but growing cohort of compact electric hatches, alongside the Alpine A290, Cupra Raval VZ, Peugeot e-208 GTi and Vauxhall Corsa GSE, although the Cupra is its mechanical twin so essentially the same car.
