The VW ID.4 won't be available to the general public until at least 2026. Picture: Mark Jones
The Citizen Motoring has spent an extended period in the all-electric VW ID.4 Pro that they are using in South Africa to continue to test the waters of where our mindset is heading when it comes to purchasing an electric car over a normal petrol or diesel derivative.
This is Volkswagen’s top selling all-electric car and if market sentiment is positive, the ID.4 Pro should make its way to showroom floors in 2026.
The one thing electric cars have done is divide the motoring public. There is no middle ground when it comes to this topic. You are either: “Eskom can’t keep the lights on and I don’t want to sit in a coffee shop for hours while my car charges”, or: “This is the future and I am saving the planet. They make sense from a zero-emission point of view while also being cheap to run.”
I am not going to get into some huge moral debate around little children mining cobalt. And how the emissions produced to produce emission-free cars are higher, or that cows might produce more harmful gases than cars. Yet you don’t see them being taxed and given targets to reduce their emissions. So, I am just going to come out and admit that I love electric cars for everyday use.
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I am not so in love with them as high-performance cars as they all have the same feel. For me a high-performance car must have some noise and drama going on to truly excite you.
And this leads me back to the VW ID.4 Pro. It’s obviously not a high-performance car as it “only” produces 150kW of power and 310Nm of torque. These numbers are decent for a family mover SUV, but more as a very frugal electric commuter.
Just for giggles, while The Citizen Motoring was at Gerotek to test another car, I thought I would give the VW ID.4 Pro a run. It hit 100km/h in a quick eight seconds and ran onto the electronic speed limiter of 160km/h in only 600m of road.
So, not slow at all, but it’s in the daily “fuel” bill department that the car demonstrates its true value. The VW ID.4 Pro has a 77-kWh battery (fuel tank) that offered us a range of 440km when fully charged. This was more than enough to do everything I would need to do during an average week.
It means that the ID.4 Pro use 17.5kWh per 100km. At R3.80 per kWh to charge the car at my home, the cost to fully charge (fill) the car cost me only R292.60. That in today’s petrol price terms translates into a mere three litres per 100 km and that’s hard to beat with anything that runs on petrol or diesel and performs like this.
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