What Does ID Stand For On Volkswagen Vehicles?

The Volkswagen Automotive Group is based in Wolfsburg, Germany and was the top-grossing automaker in the world in 2024. VW employs about 684,000 and has 114 production sites worldwide. Its automotive brands, which include Volkswagen, Audi, Skoda, Cupra, Seat, Bentley, Porsche, and Lamborghini, accumulated 2024 sales of just over 9 million units in total. Of these, nearly 4.8 million were Volkswagen-branded passenger vehicles.

ID. on Volkswagen Vehicles stands for Intelligent Design, and is a tag applied to Volkswagen's electric vehicles (EVs). VW's sudden switch to an all-electric future was driven in part by the over $20 billion in fines and settlements it paid in the U.S. in the wake of the Dieselgate emissions-cheating scandal. Since that near-death event, Volkswagen has fully committed to an electric future to atone for Dieselgate and create a clean new vision for this tarnished brand. 

Volkswagen started ID. EV production in late 2019 with its compact ID.3 model. The Launch Edition that was initially built was supplemented by three additional models — the ID.3 Pure, the ID.3 Pro, and the ID.3 Pro S — each offering a variety of battery capacities, power outputs, and ranges. The ID.3, which notched 149,100 sales worldwide in 2024, was followed up with a variety of similar models in different parts of the world since then. These include the top-selling ID.4/ID.5 (182,000 sales in 2024), the flagship ID.7 electric sedan (40,100 sales in 2024), and the ID.Buzz van, which sold 29,900 units in 2024. 

There are currently two Volkswagen ID. vehicles available in the United States: the ID.Buzz and the ID.4. The Volkswagen ID.Buzz is better known as the modern EV reincarnation of the Volkswagen Microbus, but with crashworthiness and performance added at a much higher price. The ID.Buzz comes in two different variants, one with rear-wheel drive (RWD) and 234 miles of range, the other with all-wheel drive (AWD) and 231 miles of range. Both versions come with a 91 kWh battery pack. Space utilization is a strong suit of the ID.Buzz, which offers a maximum of 146 cu. ft. of storage space when both the second row and third row seats are folded flat. Pricing for the ID.Buzz Pro S starts at $59,995, with the AWD 1st Edition starting at $69,995.

The Volkswagen ID.4 is Volkswagen's compact two-row electric SUV. Like the ID.Buzz, the ID.4 is available with either RWD (291 miles of range) or AWD (263 miles of range). Current battery pack capacity for both drive configurations is 82 kWh, with a lower-capacity 62 kWh battery pack to be available at a later date. Cargo space in the ID.4 is less than the box-shaped ID.Buzz, but the ID.4 does have 30.3 cu. ft. of space behind the rear seat and 64.2 cu. ft. of space with the rear seat folded. Pricing for the Volkswagen ID.4 starts at $45,095 for the entry-level Pro RWD and maxes out at $57,295 for the Pro S Plus AWD.