Juergen Stackmann, member of the Board of Management, Volkswagen Passenger and Cars brand presents the pre-order scheme of the Volkswagen ID 3 electric car during a press conference in Berlin on May 8, 2019. The German automaker started to accept pre-orders for the ID.3 Wednesday, asking for a deposit of 1,000 euros. VW's Golf-sized ID.3 will officially launch this September at the Frankfurt Motor Show. The car is named ID.3 because Volkswagen views the model as the third major evolution in the firm's history, after the Golf and Beetle. The auto giant revealed Wednesday that the entry-level car will cost less than 30,000 euros ($33,600), with deliveries in Europe slated for the middle of 2020. Volkswagen has claimed that pre-orders for its ID.3 electric hatchback surpassed 10,000 cars in just 24 hours. Customers who pre-book can officially order their cars after the Frankfurt show. Orders become binding in April 2020, with those who change their mind able to get a full refund until then. Volkswagen sales boss Jürgen Stackmann said on Twitter Thursday that more than 10,000 registrations were received throughout Europe within 24 hours of the launch. https://twitter.com/jstackmann/status/1126454390003568640 That number falls well short of the launch of the Tesla Model 3 in April 2016. According to the company's chief executive Elon Musk, in just two days the Model 3 generated 276,000 pre-orders secured by deposits of $1000. On Wednesday, VW's Stackmann told reporters that the electric car will allow for more internal space than a traditional internal combustion engine (ICE). "From the outside, the ID.3 will be as large as a Golf. In the interior, it will be as spacious as a medium-sized car." VW plans to sell three versions of the ID.3 (45kWh, 58kWh, 77kWh) with varying ranges (200 miles, 261 miles and 342 miles). The German firm said a full warranty on the ID.3's battery will cover eight years, just under 100,000 miles or the normal depreciation of the battery to 70% of its original maximum capacity. WATCH: Concerns about EV infrastructure 'overplayed'<doc-sep>Elon Musk Mike Blake | Reuters It's been a tough month for Tesla, and the challenges the Silicon Valley electric-car maker faces will only accelerate now that two major European automakers are launching sales of their first entries into the long-range EV market. Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz began taking orders Wednesday and Thursday, respectively, for new battery-electric vehicles, with the two companies each planning to follow up with a wave of additional entries over the next few years. Whether they will prove to be "Tesla killers," as some observers have dubbed them, is far from certain but the two German manufacturers are each investing billions of euros in their electrification programs. "With the Mercedes-Benz EQC, we are entering a new era of mobility," said Britta Seeger, member of the board of management of Daimler responsible for Mercedes-Benz cars sales. "It is part of the growing family of all-electric vehicles at Mercedes-Benz and combines brand-defining features such as quality, safety and comfort." But one of the keys to success Seeger added, is likely to be longer "range absolutely suitable for everyday use." The Mercedes Benz EQC. Adam Jeffery | CNBC The first wave of electric vehicles, such as the Nissan Leaf and Ford Focus Electric, could deliver only around 100 miles per charge. Tesla proved an immediate breakout with its Model S sedan yielding more than double that – and its latest version of that sedan is EPA-rated at 370 miles between charges. The compact Mercedes EQC, essentially an electrified version of its GLC crossover, will get around 270 miles in European trim and even more in the version slated for the U.S. market. Volkswagen's first long-range entry, the ID.3, lifts a page from Tesla's playbook by offering customers three different battery pack options. The smallest, at 45 kilowatt-hours, is expected to manage around 200 miles, based on European testing, with optional 58 and 77 kWh battery packs rated at around 260 and 340 miles, respectively. The new VW hatchback hasn't even had its official world premiere — expected to take place at the Frankfurt Motor Show next autumn — and it will be about a year before the first customers can take delivery. But the automaker on Thursday opened up a special website for advance orders. Pricing for the ID.3, which initially will target the European market, will start at 30,000 euros ($34,000). Customers in Europe preordered 10,000 ID.3s in the first 24 hours on the market there, overwhelming the company's website and leading to long wait times online, VW said. A Volkswagen ID 3 electric car is seen in a glass cage during a press conference in Berlin on May 8, 2019. ODD ANDERSEN | AFP | Getty Images The crossover, which will anchor a new sub-brand dubbed Volkswagen ID, will be just the first in a broad array of about 50 long-range electric vehicles the Wolfsburg, Germany-based carmaker plans to bring to the market by mid-decade through its various brands. It has already launched sales of the new Audi e-tron crossover and is preparing to deliver the first Porsche Taycan battery sports cars. For the U.S., VW will begin its electrified assault next year with a production version of the ID Crozz concept. In January, during a visit to the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Volkswagen Chief Executive Officer Herbert Diess said his company will spend $800 million to expand its factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, to handle that crossover and another all-electric model, a move that also will create about 1,000 new jobs. "The supertanker is picking up speed," Volkswagen executives said during a March presentation in Frankfurt. "We are aligning Volkswagen with e-mobility like no other company in our industry." Adam Jeffery | CNBC Adam Jeffery | CNBC Volkswagen's diesel emissions scandal has already cost it around $30 billion and seen a number of executives jailed or indicted, including former CEO Martin Winterkorn. The company's shifting its focus from the "oil-burners" that long dominated its lineup to focus on electrification. It has announced plans to spend 9 billion euros, about $10 billion at current exchange rates, on battery cars by 2023. And during his Frankfurt speech, Diess upped his estimate of VW's global EV sales projections from 15 million vehicles to 22 million over the next decade. These numbers dwarf those of Daimler, but the parent of the Mercedes-Benz and Smart brands is making a similarly aggressive push relative to its size. "We are going to launch 10 pure battery-electric vehicles until the end of 2022, and we are covering the whole portfolio — from Smart [cars] to big SUVs and big sedans," board member Wilko Stark announced during a news conference at the Paris Motor Show in September. The Mercedes Benz EQC. Adam Jeffery | CNBC The new Mercedes EQC will go on sale in Europe first and then follow with an American market launch sometime next year, officials said during last month's New York International Auto Show. The event saw the debut of the EQC Edition 1886, a special launch version referencing the year when the founders of what is now Daimler patented the world's first vehicle to use an internal combustion engine. The EQC Edition 1886 is promised to deliver 292 miles per charge and, with an output of 402 horsepower and 564 pound-feet of torque, it will launch from 0 to 60 in less than five seconds. Those numbers suggest it will pose a direct challenge to both Tesla's older Model X and upcoming Model Y. While Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen are just putting their battery-car programs into motion, BMW is preparing its own ramp-up. It currently offers an all-electric city car, the i3, through a special sub-brand, though that model doesn't match the range of what can be thought of as second-generation BEVs. A new BMW i3 electric car is seen on the assembly line at the BMW factory in Leipzig, Germany. Getty Images Future long-range products will more directly target Tesla, as well as Mercedes and VW. The Bavarian automaker recently confirmed plans to migrate to new vehicle platforms that will allow it to offer all-electric versions of virtually every model in its lineup. Jaguar Land Rover was actually the first European automaker to enter the long-range space, its Jaguar I-Pace last month being named World Car of the Year by an international panel of motoring journalists. But the wave of new products will soon turn into a tsunami. According to InsideEVs, a website devoted to electrification, 14 new battery cars will land in the U.S. market in 2020, with even more coming to Europe and China — the latter market encouraging the buildup with tough new energy vehicle regulations enacted in late 2017. Ian Callum and the Jaguar I-Pace accept the award for the 2019 World Car Award at the New York Auto Show in New York on April 17th, 2019. Adam Jeffery | CNBC<doc-sep>
Volkswagen opened up pre-orders in Europe at a launch event Wednesday for a special edition of the first model in its new all-electric ID brand. Within 24 hours, the company received more than 10,000 registrations, a result that suggests growing demand for electric vehicles. VW revealed Wednesday the name, some pricing and range specs for the first model in its multi-billion-dollar effort to produce and sell a portfolio of electric vehicles. This first model, known as the ID.3, is an electric hatchback that will be offered in three battery options, with ranges between 330 and up to 550 kilometers (205 miles to 341 miles) in accordance with WLTP. The WLTP, or Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicle Test Procedure, is the European standard to measure energy consumption and emissions. Customer interest in the special edition “ID.3 1” — which will be limited to 30,000 vehicles — is “significantly exceeding the brand’s expectations, VW said Thursday, adding that the company’s website has struggled to handle the large number of users accessing the system to pre-order the vehicle. “This leads to long waiting times and interruptions in the registration process in some markets. Volkswagen is working hard to eliminate the hitches,” Volkswagen said in a statement. “Nevertheless, more than 10,000 registrations were received throughout Europe during the first 24 hours.” Production of the ID.3 1 is expected to start at the end of 2019; the first vehicles are to be delivered in mid-2020, VW said. Initial interest in the ID.3 — as measured by the pre-order figures shared by VW — is reminiscent, albeit on a smaller scale, to those heady days in 2016 when Tesla opened up reservations for its Model 3 sedan. A week after Tesla opened up pre-ordering, the company boasted more than 325,000 customers had made $1,000 deposits for the Model 3. That vehicle wouldn’t come to market until July 2017. VW customers pay a deposit of €1,000 ($1,122) to pre-order the special edition vehicle. The special edition version of the ID.3 will include free electric charging for the first year, up to a maximum of 2,000 kWh, at all public charging points connected to the Volkswagen charging app WeCharge and using the pan-European rapid charging network IONITY. The pre-booking special edition, which will cost less than €40,000 ($44,898), before incentives, has an estimated range of 420 km under WLTP (about 260 miles). A base model of the ID.3 will have a smaller battery and will start at less than €30,000 in Germany, according to VW. Volkswagen has been showing off its ID line of concept electric vehicles for several years. Now, the company is finally starting to prepare some of them for production, beginning with the ID.3. VW aims to sell 100,000 ID.3 vehicles annually. The ID.3 hatchback is the first model to be built on the automaker’s new Modular Electric Drive Toolkit, or MEB, electric-car architecture. Introduced in 2016, MEB is a flexible modular system — really a matrix of common parts — for producing electric vehicles that VW says makes it more efficient and cost-effective. Others will soon follow. VW plans to have a portfolio of more than 20 full-electric models. The automaker’s goal is to sell 1 million electric vehicles annually by 2025.