Volkswagen postpones US sales launch of VW ID.4

Volkswagen postponed the US sales launch of the VW ID.4 from December 2020 to March 2021 as the company is putting deliveries in the European Union first. The reason is that VW needs to reduce CO2 among sold vehicles to avoid penalty payments to the EU.

++ This article has been updated. Kindly find all updates below. ++

As Automotive News reports, the focus for deliveries of the ID.4 on the European market is to avoid or reduce the threat of fines if a manufacturer fails to meet the prescribed EU targets for CO2 emissions from its vehicle fleet.

Since the production of MEB-based electric cars at the US plant in Chattanooga is not scheduled to start until 2022 – the plant is currently being expanded for ID.4 production – the ID.4 units planned for the North American market are currently still being built in Zwickau and then shipped. In addition to Zwickau, the electric SUV is currently also being built at the Chinese plants in Anting and Foshan (as ID.4 X for SAIC-VW and in Foshan as ID.4 Crozz for FAW-VW). VW wants to start production in Emden and the US plant in Tennessee in 2022.

The German-built ID.4 uses battery cells from LG Chem, while SK Innovation will supply the production in Chattanooga. The early ID.4 importers in the USA would therefore have different battery cells than the actual US model.

According to the original plan, the ID.4 made in Zwickau was to start in California and several other US states in parallel to the deliveries in Europe. In the first half of 2021, the nationwide US launch should then have taken place in 50 states.

Now it is to become a nationwide sales launch in March 2021. A VW spokesperson confirmed that they had rescheduled the US launch last Friday. “We will still have a few hundred vehicles for customer events and drive programs early next year, with the 50-state retail launch starting in March, timed to the spring selling season,” the spokesperson said. “We want this launch to have the biggest impact possible with a steady cadence once ID.4 starts to arrive at dealerships.”

According to an analysis published in October by Transport & Environment, Volkswagen was still five grams above the target mark in the first half of 2020. T&E calculated using published sales figures. Since the figures so far only reflect the first half of the year up to the end of June, they do not include either the ID.3, which is out since September or the surge in demand triggered by the Innovation Premium. Since Volkswagen now wants to register every ID.4 available in Europe in December, the group-internal extrapolation does not seem to deliver a clearly positive result at the moment – it might get tight.

Update 12 March 2021: The first batch of VW ID.4 customer cars has now arrived in the U.S. The market launch was originally planned for late December 2020, but then delayed to March 2021 as the company was putting deliveries in the European Union first to avoid costly CO2 fines. It is not yet entirely clear exactly how many units of the ID.4 were shipped to the USA, however it is expected that the German company will slowly ramp up deliveries over the next weeks.