Volkswagen unveil ‘sportiest EV to date’ with whopping range and fancy ‘dynamics manager’

THE day after driving this car up and down the M1 I decided that electric cars were screwed.

I wrote a long piece for this paper about it, bursting with righteous anger.

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The GTX is Volkswagen’s ‘sportiest and most powerful electric car to date’[/caption]

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It is essentially a Golf GTI for the net zero generation[/caption]

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It comes with a fancy pants ‘Vehicle Dynamics Manager’[/caption]

Britain just doesn’t have the infrastructure to support all the EVs on the roads today, I fumed.

That hasn’t changed.

We’re doomed to stall unless we fix it.

Good luck with that Keir Starmer – and probably the next chump in charge after him.

What I hardly mentioned, though, was the car I was driving.

The Volkswagen ID3 GTX Performance was reduced to a bit part player in my mini melodrama.

And that’s unfair because it is actually a very fine car indeed.

It is essentially a Golf GTI for the net zero generation.

Of course it’s NOT a GTI. You don’t get the engine sound for starters – but you do get the thrust.

This thing might not go as fast, top speed is limited to 124mph compared to 155mph for the GTI, but it’s just as quick off the line, with 326hp under your right foot.

I loved charging about in it. Even if charging it was a pain.

It handled the windy roads of rural Derbyshire beautifully, helped by the fact the battery is located bang smack in the centre of the car so weight is equally distributed.

The fancy pants “Vehicle Dynamics Manager” also uses a whole heap of sensors and algorithms to control the shock absorbers so your passengers don’t spill their lattes as you Verstappen the B-roads.

As the top-of-the-range ID3, it has the biggest battery of the lot – a heavyweight 79kWh unit that VW reckon will give you a range of 369 miles.

But of course it won’t do anything like that, unless you drive this hottest of hatches like your gran going to the Co-op for her weekly shop.

‘Sportiest to date’

And you’re not going to do that – this car is not called the GTX Performance for nothing.

As VW proudly says, it is their “sportiest and most powerful electric car to date” – and they want you to play with it.

Just like you used to play with that old GTI you had in the Eighties.

The one you did J-turns in the Asda car park, hoping to impress that girl wearing a Duran Duran T-shirt under her shell suit.

Back when the only electric car you ever drove was Scalextric.

And it never ran out of juice.