Volkswagen ID.3 – camouflaged electric hatch leaked

Volkswagen is making huge strides into the world of electric mobility with its first electric vehicle, the production version of the ID. concept, which will go on sale roughly a year from now. To coincide with the start of pre-bookings in Europe tomorrow, Wolfsburg is kicking off a massive marketing campaign with a series of carefully coordinated ads and videos set to cost the company tens of millions of Euros.

Unfortunately, VW’s Dutch arm has thrown a spanner in the works by releasing a few of those videos early. These have since been removed from YouTube, but not before Polish EV portal elektrowoz.pl managed to snag a few screenshots that show the hatchback from all angles – along with its finalised name, ID.3.

Even though the car is still wearing swirly red-and-blue camouflage, its styling is clear to see. As you can tell, the ID.3 features the same basic silhouette as the show car, along with the glasshouse shape and some of the detailing, but a number of fanciful elements have been swapped out for more production-ready items.

For instance, the headlights ditch their flat pixelated look for more conventional projectors, and they are joined together by a light strip that runs across the VW badge. The slimline air intake of the concept has also been made larger, although the hexagonal imprint above it remains. Moving further back, wing mirrors take the place of cameras and the doors now open the normal (instead of suicide) way, using normal handles.

At the rear, the slim tail light strips are gone, replaced by larger L-shaped items; one can also spot the large number plate recess in the bumper that sits above the diffuser. The wheels also differ from the concept’s flat-faced rollers – their two-tone design appears to be inspired by the one on the ID. R race car.

The ID.3 will be unveiled at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September, riding on the new modular MEB platform for EVs and featuring an expected range of up to 550 km on the more stringent WLTP cycle.