Volkswagen has confirmed the worst-kept secret in the entire motor industry: the German car maker is renaming its strong-selling Volkswagen ID.4 as the ID.Tiguan, and it will go on sale in Ireland next April.
That means that VW will miss the all-important first quarter of new car sales in 2027, which may threaten its hold on the top spot of the electric car market. The current ID.4 has been Ireland’s bestselling EV for some time.
VW Ireland hopes to combat that by bringing in some left-hand-drive demo models for dealers in January, keeping its fingers crossed that potential buyers will be impressed enough that they will order a car ahead of its delivery time. Certainly, the ID.Tiguan will arrive with some tempting prices – €38,635 for the basic model.
The name change is part of a general move towards combining the brand’s ID-badged all-electric models with more familiar, long-serving names. That process will reach an apogee in two years’ time with the launch of the ID.Golf, but it’s already proving a success. The recently launched electric ID.Polo is proving such a sales success, along with the strong demand for the updated ID.3, that VW is actually putting on extra shifts at its German factories in Emden and Zwicka, and at Seat’s factory in Barcelona to keep up with demand.
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Even so, there’s now a substantial waiting list for an ID.Polo, as much as ten months or even longer. According to VW Ireland, if you order the most basic, circa-€20,000 version of the Polo now, you might be waiting until September 2027 to receive delivery. For higher-spec models, that wait is reduced to next March, and you might get one sooner than that if you’re willing to be flexible when it comes to colour, trim and equipment.
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It’s a welcome bright spot of news for VW in a torrid 2026 that has seen the company lay out plans for 150,000 job cuts and factory closures and multibillion euro losses as it grapples with falling sales in China and increased competition in Europe from Chinese car makers. Sadly, the extra shifts for the Polo won’t make a huge overall difference to VW’s workers – while extra shifts are being laid on for its EV models, shifts in other factories that make combustion-engine cars are likely to be reduced.
“Demand for battery-electric vehicles is noticeably increasing in Germany and other European countries,” Martin Sander, VW’s board member for sales, is quoted as saying in the German publication Automobilwoche. “This marks an important turning point in the transformation of the automotive market, driven in part by high prices for petrol and diesel. At the same time this means lower demand for vehicles with internal combustion engines.”
As well as the name, VW is also changing the ID.4’s styling to turn it into the ID.Tiguan. The nose, in particular, looks more upright and substantial, and there are new headlights and a light bar that link it visually to the ID.Polo. The overall styling is chunkier, less curvy and more of an SUV-like shape than the tall saloon look of the ID.4.
Inside, the ID.Tiguan gets an entirely new dashboard, which VW hopes will exorcise the quality demons that saw early ID.4 criticised. There’s a new digital instrument panel, lifted from the ID.3 Neo and ID.Polo, which, as well as offering more screen space than before, also allows ID.Tiguan drivers to wallow in a little nostalgia, as the screen can be configured to look like the analogue dials of the Mk1 Golf, the Mk2 Golf Country, the Mk1 Tiguan or even the Dakar Rally Race Touareg or the Beetle.
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There’s an interesting mix of tech and tradition too, as VW upgrades the ID.Tiguan’s software, which is Google-based but brings back physical buttons for the air conditioning and other controls, following excoriating criticism of the touch-sensitive “slider” controls of the ID.4. There’s also, for the first time, the option of a passenger-side screen which can run the likes of YouTube, Amazon Prime Video and Spotify. There’s also a new squared-off steering wheel (also with real buttons) lifted from the ID.Polo and new magnetic wireless phone-charging pads.
As far as performance is concerned, there’s unlikely to be any changes as the ID.Tiguan will stick with the existing 77kWh battery and 286hp electric motor for its long-range versions, which should yield a driving range of 601km on the official WLTP cycle, with about 450-500km usable in day-to-day driving.
There’s also a more affordable 58kWh lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) battery for the entry-level ID.Tiguan, which should have a range of just over 451km. There will be a 299hp four-wheel drive version, too, which more or less matches the rear-wheel drive model for range, but there’s no confirmation as to whether the high-performance ID.4 GTX will be replaced. VW is bringing the GTI badge to its electric cars for the first time with the ID.Polo and ID.3 GTi versions, but whether the ID.Tiguan can be made sufficiently sporty to qualify for a GTI badge is unknown for now.
While the ID.Tiguan’s boot is fractionally smaller than that of the ID.4, it compensates by, for the first time, having a shallow “frunk” storage area in the nose that allows you to stash the charging cables in there instead of having them clutter up the boot.
For Irish buyers, there’s also a unique Launch Edition model, which adds such items as metallic paint, 20-inch alloy wheels, a panoramic sunroof and an electric tailgate, for a price of €43,821 with the smaller battery and the 190hp motor. Or, for the same price, you can have the bigger-battery, 286hp model but without the extra equipment. A higher-spec, more expensive, R-Line model will arrive in mid-2027, although we haven’t been given prices for that one yet.
Given the dramatic shift to electric car purchases in Ireland and across Europe thanks in large part to Donald Trump’s war on Iran triggering a fuel price spike, a lower price tag could push the ID.Tiguan to new sales heights, which would be a welcome fillip for VW’s management.
Certainly, the continued high price for petrol and diesel will push more and more buyers towards battery cars. The latest research from DoneDeal Cars shows that 61 per cent of Irish car buyers who are interested in making the switch to electric power cited high fuel costs as their overriding concern, although concerns persist about the potential for expensive battery repairs.
