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We got the chance to drive the new 2024 ID.4 and found an impressive amount of changes from last model year – at least on the 82kWh version.

The 2024 ID.4 is just a new model year, but with the amount of changes that VW has made, it feels like a mid-cycle refresh. We don’t usually go to drive events for individual model year improvements, but after driving this one, it definitely had enough changes to make the drive worthwhile.

That said – all of these changes are ONLY on the bigger battery 82kWh version. The 62kWh base model ID.4 is exactly the same as last year’s model, though has received a price bump from last year, which started 2023 at a price of $37,495, then got a $1,500 price hike mid-year, and has been bumped further in 2024 up to $39,735 before destination fees.

The VW ID.4 does currently qualify for the full $7,500 US federal EV tax credit – the only car made by a foreign automaker to qualify, due to local production in Chattanooga, Tennessee – and the credit is now available upfront at the point of sale. This makes the 62kWh version quite attractive at a ~$32k base price after credit.

But since we’re talking about the 82kWh version, we should talk about that base price instead. The 2024 with the changes we saw starts at $44,875, which is still in line with the entry price of many of the other EVs out today (Ioniq 5 $42k, Model Y $44k, etc.). And again, the 82kWh ID.4 does also qualify for the full federal tax credit, bringing the price down to ~$38k.

So, what are all these big changes?

A better rear motor means more power and more efficiency

Among other things, the 82kWh ID.4 is more powerful and more efficient, due to an improved rear motor. The front motor remains the same, so RWD models will gain more improvement than AWD models.

The RWD is now 282hp with 402 lb-ft of torque, while the AWD is 335hp with 99lb-ft in the front and 402lb-ft in the rear.

This brings RWD 0-60 times to 5.9 seconds, down from 7.7, and AWD 0-60 is at 4.9 seconds, down from 5.7.

But not only does it have more power, it’s also more efficient – a rare feat. More efficiency means that the same size battery can go farther, so the 2024 RWD ID.4 now has 291 miles of EPA-estimated range, up from 275, and the AWD version has 263 miles, up from 255.

As for the drive experience of the ID.4, we drove the new RWD version on a foggy and cold day on the Angeles Crest Highway and it felt perfectly… acceptable. The ID.4 is focused on being more of an everyman’s car, not a sportscar. So it delivered a comfortable drive, with the power required for comfortable driving tasks.

It handled well on the twisty road we took it on, though the tires did seem to be working hard. Like most EVs, the ID.4 exhibited very little body roll around corners due to a low center of gravity from the battery located low in the vehicle.

Power was as much as a normal driver would need, and power delivery is smooth rather than punchy. I do tend to prefer a more punchy power delivery, and really dislike when automakers build a delay into throttle response, but the ID.4 doesn’t feel laggy (unlike the Blazer EV or Fisker Ocean that I’ve driven recently).

Like other VW Group EVs (including Audi, Porsche etc.), the ID.4 is not really capable of one-pedal driving, at least not to the degree of EVs with stronger regen like Tesla, Leaf and Bolt.

Putting the car in “B” mode does enable some amount of regenerative braking, which we were able to get to decelerate the car down to 5mph even while going down a hill. However, the regen was still quite light, and I found myself reaching for the brake pedal when entering flowing canyon corners, whereas in other EVs I would simply let off the accelerator to get the braking I wanted.

2024 VW ID.4 foggy angeles crest

I remain convinced that VW needs to increase regenerative braking strength on its EVs – and in talking to VW representatives at the event, it sounds like they’ve been hearing the same elsewhere and may finally be considering doing so.

I wouldn’t consider either of these issues particularly galling (well, maybe the regen one, because I’ve been one-pedal driving for 15 years now), but they are issues that could easily be fixed by allowing customers to select different drive modes based on their preferences.

And the ID.4 does have drive modes (ECO, comfort, sport, and “custom” where you can mix and match), but we felt very little difference between these modes. I would like to see them differentiate more between the modes – options for significantly heavier steering , punchier throttle, stronger regen, etc.

The biggest change I could find is that these different modes do change the color of the UI, so, I guess you can pick your drive mode based on whether you like red, blue, or a-slightly-different-blue as your UI accent color.

Now that we’re talking about the UI, the 2024 model has a significantly improved user interface, which we were quite impressed with.

Big UI changes vastly improve user experience

I’m a tough customer when it comes to any sort of digital user interface. I’ve said many times that most automotive UIs are terrible, with the exception of the EV startups. And most automakers seemed to have given up on making usable infotainment systems, instead ceding that work to Apple or Google with CarPlay and Android Auto. The ID.4 does come with both systems, and if you like those systems, you can go ahead and keep using them.

But VW made quite a few changes to its base user interface, and these are welcome. The screen is now 12.9 inches instead of 12 inches, though most of the new space is taken up by a persistent climate control display, giving access to fan speed controls and split temperature controls for driver and passenger. It also allows operation of the ventilated seats, which are new for the 2024 model.

Temperature and volume controls are also available with a physical touch bar below the display. This touch bar is now illuminated in the 2024 model, as in the previous model it was hard to see at night.

VW updated its EV route planner for the 2024 model, which can now include up to 10 charging stops on a route, and takes into account both Electrify America stations and others (though no NACS yet, but we expect that’s coming soon™).

To use it, you just input a destination and the car will plan your charge stops for you, telling you where to stop, for how long, will automatically precondition the battery to optimize charging times, and will update live to show you how many free chargers there are at the stop (though this is in tiny font, in dark grey on a light grey background – more visibility would be better on this UI feature).

While we didn’t get to test fast charging (which is up to 175kW on the 2024 model, up from 170kW before), the route planning function worked extremely quickly, planning out a long multi-stop route in only a couple seconds – even quicker than Tesla’s system does it.

And you can customize the settings, telling your car to ensure you don’t go under a certain percentage while driving or that you have at least a certain amount of range at your destination (e.g. if you’re traveling to a place you won’t have overnight charging at). One UI screen tells you an estimate of how fast you would charge if you charged right now, so while we don’t know the actual charge curve of the car just yet, you can get a sense of it by looking at this screen.

Another relevant charging-related change is that the ID.4 just recently (finally) got plug & charge. This was rolled out to 2023 models on Electrify America stations just last month, but the 2024 model will be able to use Plug & Charge on non-EA stations as well. Plug & Charge is the name of a feature that allows you to just plug into a DC charge station and walk away without having to open any apps or swipe any cards or anything – a similar experience to using a Tesla Supercharger.

UI controls were reasonably responsive in general, partially due to updated processing speed and memory for the infotainment system (though it’s still not buttery-smooth as you would expect from an iPad, which frankly is the bar that all automakers should aspire to), though the layout of sub-menus was sometimes confusing and hard to find things in. This would probably go away with some experience, but we did skip over a few of the sub menus we were looking for due to being named with generic-sounding headings like “basic functions.”

The software improvements on this car are notable, given that VW has had some difficulty with EV software timelines in the past. Its Cariad software unit, created in 2020 to improve EV software issues and deliver over-the-air updates to vehicles (basically, to make VW’s software more Tesla-like), has had problems getting up to speed, to the point where the unit’s difficulties reportedly were a large contributor to former CEO Herbert Diess’ departure. In October, the company tapped some EV startup veterans to try to fix these problems.

And some other small physical changes were made, like a slight relocation of the PRND level for better visibility, and moving the hazard button downward slightly, because previously it was easy to accidentally press it when reaching for the touchscreen (as pointed out by Electrek‘s very own Michelle Lewis, who owns an ID.4 herself).

A new LED strip has been added at the base of the windshield, which we’ve seen on several other vehicles lately. But rather than just being ambient lighting (which the car also has, and it’s adjustable), VW has made the windshield strip functional. It syncs with the nav system and swipes a blue streak across the strip to tell you which direction you need to turn, and it shows certain alerts, like flashing red when the car’s safety sensors want to tell you something. I really liked this feature.

A ChatGPT-enabled voice assistant in your ID.4

One feature that we found to be quite cool was the new ChatGPT-enabled voice assistant function. VW says it’s the “first volume manufacturer to make this innovative technology a standard feature in vehicles from the compact segment upwards,” though we have seen a beta of something similar from Mercedes.

This is an extension of VW’s “IDA” (get it? it looks like “ID.4”) voice assistant, who can be called up by pressing a steering wheel button or saying “hey IDA.” It allows control over an impressive set of vehicle functions, which you can see a partial list of by digging through the IDA menus. All of this is theoretically accessible through natural language search, so you don’t have to say specific catchphrases, but you can just talk to your car and she’ll figure out what you’re looking for.

In practice, though we didn’t use it extensively, it did reasonably well at understanding our meaning, though it wasn’t 100% accurate. There were definitely times that we had to restate or rephrase our questions to get a good answer out of the voice assistant, but that’s something we have all unfortunately come to expect out of these types of systems. In terms of voice recognition it was quick and reasonably accurate, and the wide range of things that it can do was better than other voice assistant systems we’ve seen in cars.

But maybe the neatest aspect of the IDA system is that you don’t have to call it IDA. You can in fact call it anything you want, by changing the “wake word” in software. Behold!

(to VW: I’m sorry, your voice assistant is actually quite nice and did not deserve the abusive name, I am just a child)

Honestly, this is a feature that I just love. It’s such a simple thing to be able to change the wake word, but it makes so much sense, especially in an automotive context.

On the one hand it enables dumb jokes like mine above, but on the other hand it’s a genuine improvement (e.g. if someone in your home is named Ciri, or if you ever talk “seriously” about anything, it can be confusing to have an Apple device around), and it dovetails quite well with the already-existing societal trend of people naming their cars. Now you can actually name your car something, and it will respond to that name!

If nothing else, it’s a great crowd pleaser, and it worked within moments the first time we tried it. Any VW dealer who wants to sell a car, just sit the customer down inside and show them a demo of this one feature and you’ll surely surprise and delight them.

Conclusion and availability

Despite the tendency of VW Group EVs to make some “safe” choices (like no one-pedal driving), in keeping with their somewhat traditional stance as far as automakers go, I found myself saying “oh, that’s cool” a lot of times during our quick couple hours with the car, mostly related to the various UI improvements made. They seem to have done a solid job here.

In fact, there’s so many changes that I even asked VW if it would be appropriate to call this a mid-cycle refresh, particularly given that the car is ~3 years old now. They said no, because usually those involve some sort of change to the exterior sheet metal of the vehicle (the only exterior changes are wheels – 20in on the AWD entry level, and 21in on the AWD/RWD S Plus trim), but that the 2024 is indeed a “strong” model year update.

And, once again, all of these changes are only on the more expensive 82kWh version, not the base model 62kWh version. This is a bit disappointing, because VW did tout the 62kWh’s attractive entry price in its presentation to us, though all of the new features are gated behind a $5,140 upgrade to a larger battery which many customers just don’t need.

But, maybe these changes will migrate down the model range when the real mid-cycle refresh comes, perhaps in another year or two. We can hope, anyway.

Regardless, big upgrades here. If you were considering getting an ID.4 already, you can be even happier at the value proposition once the 2024s hit dealerships, which happens in March.

If you’d like, you can use our links to contact your local dealers about the 2024 VW ID.4, and get yourself in line for when they’re delivered in this coming month.

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Podcast: Trump/GOP go after EV/solar, Tesla, Ford, GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more

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Podcast: Trump/GOP go after EV/solar, Tesla, Ford, GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more

In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss Trump’s Big Beautiful bill becoming law and going after EVs and solar, Tesla, Ford, and GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more

Today’s episode is brought to you by Bosch Mobility Aftermarket—A global leader and trusted provider of automotive aftermarket parts. To celebrate Amazon Prime Day July 8th through 11th, Bosch Mobility is offering exclusive savings on must-have auto parts and tools. Learn more here.

The show is live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel.

As a reminder, we’ll have an accompanying post, like this one, on the site with an embedded link to the live stream. Head to the YouTube channel to get your questions and comments in.

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After the show ends at around 5 p.m. ET, the video will be archived on YouTube and the audio on all your favorite podcast apps:

We now have a Patreon if you want to help us avoid more ads and invest more in our content. We have some awesome gifts for our Patreons and more coming.

Here are a few of the articles that we will discuss during the podcast:

Here’s the live stream for today’s episode starting at 4:00 p.m. ET (or the video after 5 p.m. ET:

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Tesla prototype sparks speculation: a Model Y, maybe slightly smaller

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Tesla prototype sparks speculation: a Model Y, maybe slightly smaller

A new Tesla prototype was spotted again, reigniting speculation among Tesla shareholders, even though it’s likely just a Model Y, potentially a bit smaller, and the upcoming stripped-down, cheaper version.

Over the last few months, there have been several sightings of what appears to be a Model Y with camouflage around Tesla’s Fremont factory.

It sparked a lot of speculation about it being the new “affordable” compact Tesla vehicle.

There’s confusion in the Tesla community around Tesla’s upcoming “affordable” vehicles because CEO Elon Musk falsely denied a report last year about Tesla’s “$25,000” EV model being canceled.

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The facts are that Musk canceled two cheaper vehicles that Tesla was working on, commonly referred as “the $25,000 Tesla” in early 2024. Those vehicles were codenamed NV91 and NV92, and they were based on the new vehicle platform that Tesla is now reserving for the Cybercab.

Instead, Musk noticed that Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y production lines were starting to be underutilized as the Company faced demand issues. Therefore, Tesla canceled the vehicles program based on the new platform and decided to build new vehicles on Model 3/Y platform using the same production lines.

We previously reported that these electric vehicles will likely look very similar to Model 3 and Model Y.

In recent months, several other media reports reinforced this, and Tesla all but confirmed it during its latest earnings call, when it stated that it is “limited in how different vehicles can be when built on the same production lines.”

Now, the same Tesla prototype has been spotted over the last few days, and it sent the Tesla shareholders community into a frenzy of speculations:

Electrek’s Take

As we have repeatedly reported over the last year, the new “affordable” Tesla “models” coming are basically only stripped-down Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.

They might end up being a little smaller by a few inches, and Tesla may use different model names, but they will be extremely similar.

If this is it, which is possible, you can see it looks almost exactly like a Model Y.

It’s hard to confirm if it’s indeed smaller because of the angle of the vehicle compared to the other Model Ys, but it’s not impossible that the wheelbase is a bit smaller – although it’s hard to confirm.

Either way, the most significant changes for these stripped-down, more affordable “models” are expected to be cheaper interior materials, like textile seats instead of vegan leather, no heated or ventilated seats standard, no rear screen, maybe even no double-panned acoustic glass and a lesser audio system.

As previously stated, the real goal of these new variants, or models, is to lower the average sale price in order to combat decreasing demand and maintain or increase the utilization rate of Tesla’s current production lines, which have been throttled down in the last few years to now about 60% utilization.

If this trend continues, Tesla would find itself in trouble and may even have to close its factories.

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Ethereum is powering Wall Street’s future. The crypto scene at Cannes shows how far it’s come

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Ethereum is powering Wall Street's future. The crypto scene at Cannes shows how far it's come

Ethereum succeeded beyond anyone's expectations, says network co-founder Vitalik Buterin at EthCC

CANNES — Wall Street’s new plumbing is being built on Ethereum and this week its architects took over the same French Riviera villas and red carpet venues that host the Cannes Film Festival in May.

The Ethereum Community Conference, or EthCC, took over the beachside town that was swarming with crypto founders, developers, and some of the institutional giants now building atop the infrastructure.

The crypto elite climbed the iconic red-carpeted steps of the Palais des Festivals — a cinematic landmark now repurposed as the stage for Ethereum’s flagship European event.

“The atmosphere this year was palpable in Cannes,” said Bettina Boon Falleur, the powerhouse behind EthCC for the past seven years. “The prestige of the location, combined with the quality of talks, has reinforced Ethereum’s stature and purpose in the wider ecosystem.”

Private parties sprawled across cliffside estates and exclusive resorts, but the conversations were less about price action and more about the blockchain’s evolving role as the back-end of global finance.

EthCC, now in its eighth year, has tracked Ethereum’s trajectory from scrappy experiment to institutional backbone.

“That impact was unmistakable this year,” Falleur said. “From Robinhood embracing decentralized finance infrastructure via Arbitrum to local governments like the City of Cannes exploring deeper integration with the crypto economy.”

Indeed, one of the boldest moves came this week from Robinhood, which became the first publicly traded U.S. company to launch tokenized stocks on-chain.

At a product showcase held inside a Belle Époque mansion overlooking the sea, Robinhood unveiled a sweeping new crypto strategy — including the ability for European users to trade tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs via Arbitrum, a Layer 2 network built on Ethereum.

The announcement helped push Robinhood stock past $100 for the first time, capping off a week of fresh all-time highs and a more than 30% rally since being snubbed by the S&P 500 during a recent rebalance.

Inside the Palais des Festivals, ETHCC draws founders, developers, and institutions into the same halls that host the world’s biggest film premieres — this time, for the future of finance.

MacKenzie Sigalos

Ether, the token native to the Ethereum blockchain, was up nearly 6% on the week and several public equities tied to the blockchain have rallied alongside it.

BitMine Immersion Technologies, a company that mines bitcoin, gained more than 1,200% since announcing it would make ether its primary treasury reserve asset. Bit Digital, which recently exited bitcoin mining to “become a pure play” ethereum staking and treasury company, gained more than 34% this week. And SharpLink Gaming, which added more than $20 million in ether to its balance sheet this week, jumped more than 28% on Thursday.

Ether ETF inflows are rising again too — a sign that institutional investors are warming back up.

Ether is still down more than 20% this year and lags far behind bitcoin in market cap and adoption. But funds tracking ETH have seen two straight months of mostly net inflows, according to CoinGlass data. Still, ether ETFs total just $11 billion — compared to $138 billion in bitcoin ETFs.

Institutions aren’t betting on Ethereum for hype — they’re betting on infrastructure.

Even as prices stall and the network faces headwinds from slower base layer revenues and faster rivals like Solana, the momentum is shifting toward utility.

“Ethereum is getting plugged into these core transactional systems,” Paul Brody, global blockchain leader at EY, told CNBC on the sidelines of EthCC. “Investors, savers, people moving money — they are going to start shifting from some of the older mechanisms of doing this into Ethereum ecosystems that can do these transactions faster, cheaper, but also very importantly, with significant new functionality attached to it.”

Crypto founders and developers climb the iconic red-carpeted steps of the Palais des Festivals — a familiar backdrop for the Cannes Film Festival, now repurposed for Ethereum’s flagship European event.

MacKenzie Sigalos

Deutsche Bank recently announced it’s building a tokenization platform on zkSync — a faster, cheaper blockchain built on top of Ethereum — to help asset managers issue and manage tokenized funds, stablecoins, and other real-world assets while meeting regulatory and data protection requirements.

Coinbase and Kraken are also racing to own the crossover between traditional stocks and crypto.

Coinbase has filed with the SEC to offer trading in tokenized public equities, a move that would diversify its revenue stream and bring it into more direct competition with brokerages like Robinhood and eToro.

Kraken announced plans to offer 24/7 trading of U.S. stock tokens in select overseas markets.

BlackRock‘s tokenized money market fund, BUIDL — launched on Ethereum last year — offers qualified investors on-chain access to yield with redemptions settled in USDC in real time.

Stablecoins, meanwhile, continue to serve as the backbone of Ethereum’s financial layer.

Circle’s USDC — the second-largest stablecoin — still settles around 65% of its volume on Ethereum’s rails. According to CoinGecko’s latest “State of Stablecoins” report, Ethereum accounts for nearly 50% of stablecoin market share.

“The builders and contributors at EthCC aren’t chasing the next bull run,” Falleur said, “they’re laying the groundwork to make Ethereum home for the next billion users.”

Even as newer blockchains tout faster speeds and lower fees, Ethereum is proving its staying power as a trusted network.

Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s co-founder, told CNBC in Cannes that there is an assumption that institutions only care about scale and speed — but in practice, it’s the opposite.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin delivers a keynote at ETHCC, laying out the network’s next steps — and its values test — as institutional adoption accelerates.

EthCC

“A lot of institutions basically tell us to our faces that they value Ethereum because it’s stable and dependable, because it doesn’t go down,” he said.

Buterin added that firms often ask about privacy and other long-term features — the kinds of concerns that institutions, he said, “really value.”

Tomasz Stańczak, the new co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, said institutions are choosing Ethereum for the same core reasons.

“Ten years without stopping for a moment. Ten years of upgrades, with a huge dedication to security and censorship resistance,” he said.

He added that when institutions send orders to the market, they want to be “absolutely sure that their order is treated fairly, that nobody has preference, that the transaction actually is executed at the time when it’s delivered.”

Those guarantees have become increasingly valuable as stablecoins and tokenized assets move into the mainstream.

The Senate’s recent passage of the GENIUS Act, along with Circle’s IPO, gave the industry a regulatory tailwind and helped reinforce Ethereum’s role as the infrastructure layer for tokenized finance.

Ethereum’s core values — neutrality, security, and censorship resistance — are emerging as competitive advantages.

The real test now is whether Ethereum can scale without losing its values.

“We don’t just want to succeed,” Buterin said from the mainstage of the Palais this week. “We want to be something that is worthy of succeeding.”

He said the hope is that future generations will look back and see a network that truly delivered openness, freedom, and permissionless access to the masses.

White-clad guests dance poolside at the rAAVE party in Cannes.

MacKenzie Sigalos

But the week didn’t end in the conference halls, it closed with tradition. On the balcony of Villa Montana, overlooking the Bay of Cannes, the rAAVE party lit up.

White-clad guests sipped cocktails as the DJ spun by the pool, haze curling from smoke machines.

This year, Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov and DeFi icon Stani Kulechov, founder of Aave, stood atop the balcony overlooking the crowd and the light-dotted skyline of Cannes.

It was a fitting snapshot of the momentum behind Ethereum’s institutional rise and symbolic of Web3’s shift from niche experiment to financial mainstay.

WATCH: Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev explains ‘dual purpose’ behind trading platform’s new crypto offerings

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev explains 'dual purpose' behind trading platform's new crypto offerings

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