With its unadorned lines, the electric ID.Every1 is an almost old-fashioned, sober Volkswagen. That was the intention, says design chief Andreas Mindt. “The big difference with others is that we want to keep it very clean,” he says. But with something special, please.
After the ID.2all concept presented in Hamburg in 2023, the smaller ID.Every1, for sale from 2027, is again a radical departure from the soft, flowing shapes of the current ID models. The 1 and 2, so to speak the new Up and Polo, are harbingers of a new generation of sleek electric hatchbacks, Volkswagen at its most sober.
In AutoWeek, the new Volkswagen chief Thomas Schäfer last year summed up the route with the knife on the table: no more woolly pretense. “The design language that our customers expect is a distinctly linear one. Not necessarily angular, but as if hewn from one piece.” For those in the know: everything that the models of the current ID family were not. And so the design chief Klaus Zyciora, responsible for these designs, was replaced by a man who, according to Schäfer, did understand it. “We are not arc drawers,” he said. “We have now sorted that out with the ID2All. We found in Andreas Mindt a design chief who lives and thinks Volkswagen and speaks the language that the customer appreciates. Space, simple operation, doing what you promise.”
The ID2 was step one. Now Mindt and his design team are taking the next step with an even more compact model, the ID1, which at 3.88 meters long is still quite generous. We couldn’t sit in it yet at the unveiling in Düsseldorf, but according to Volkswagen, it can accommodate four people plus 305 liters of luggage, and on the outside, the ID1 is once again a Volkswagen in the tradition of the first Golfs and Passats: a strong, angular profile, although it is drawn rounder and more vaulted around the wheel arches than you think. In any case, you can see in both ID2 and ID1 the clear and self-assured Volkswagen shapes of yesteryear. German solidity, with the ironic footnote that the Italian Giugiaro laid the foundation for the style with his first Golf more than fifty years ago. Sleek without frills and remarkably free of trinkets such as decorative lines and unnecessary embellishments.
Exactly as Mindt wanted, he says after the unveiling of the ID1 in Düsseldorf with the infectiousness of the truly inspired. “The big difference between the competitors and us is that we want to keep it very clean.” We have stripped everything, he says. No stickers and no chrome, no colors, nowhere non-functional ornaments that other brands stick on their cars for fun. Everything about the ID1 had to be naked essence. According to Mindt, the austerity knife cuts both ways. “On the one hand, we can keep it as affordable as possible in this way, and on the other hand, high-quality.”
It will cost twenty grand, but look more expensive. For Mindt, stripping is a kind of purification process. “What you are left with is naked metal, which we can then make a beautiful object from. Our goal was a beautiful, pure shape, which we then wanted to give a strong character of its own. Many small electric cars look shy, like a little mouse. The ID1 looks tough, with the straight hood of an SUV. The face looks up, the car looks at you proudly with a look of ‘hey, I’m not a mouse but your buddy, I’ll protect you’.”
Mindt attaches great importance to a sympathetic appearance. “He looks friendly. We wanted human eyes. They can’t be superficial, so we tried to give them depth both front and back,” he explains. The headlights of the concept project light animations like real people cast glances, the taillights have a 3D effect; you stare into a colorful light tunnel that gives the rear depth. That is also not free, because a lot of LEDs are needed for those animations, Mindt admits. Whether and to what extent such gimmicks will reach the production stage, he has to leave in the middle. After all, the car will only be there in two years. “The car you saw is eighty percent production car, twenty percent show car, but the graphic element in the lighting will remain.”
On the other hand, the ID1 should not be too fun, Mindt emphasizes: “This is not a sweet or comical car.” It must come across as serious and yet familiar. “As Thomas Schäfer said: ‘This car must have something of an old friend’.” Apparently, that familiarity with Volkswagen takes on angular shapes. Maybe that is the psychological effect of linearity: it stands like a house, you can build on it. With the Golf, angular models such as the I, II and IV remain the most attractive, that says something.
Mindt responds to that line of thought. “It’s very interesting,” he says. “I worked on the seventh generation Golf. In that car, we wanted to bring together the best elements from Golf history, because that’s how you build a brand.” So the design team examined the major steps in design in the Golf genealogy and came to interesting conclusions. “The Golf I, for example, had no shoulder line,” says Mindt. He means no flank widening under the side windows. “The area between the C-pillar and the door was one surface. That was fantastic and it looked very futuristic. You have to look at that C-pillar now, that is a masterpiece for me. It remains our role model for the surface structure of the entire car. While cars with shoulders look dated. Then you quickly get something that tries to pretend to be a larger car.”
Better keep it simple, like with the Golf IV. “That is one large surface around the rear wheel arches. I have a younger brother with a Golf IV. I asked him why he didn’t buy a new car. ‘Don’t need to,’ he said, ‘for me this one is modern.’ So that one is forever.”
Mindt likes to hear that. It proves that simplicity works. If you put that Golf IV next to its competitors at the time, you see why. “They look dated. What we therefore wanted to bring into the ID1 is the timeless stability of the surfaces that you see in the Golf I and IV. Timelessness is also stability. Stability does not bend to trends. And timelessness is simplicity.”
ID1 is Less Linear Than It Seems
Yet the design of the ID1 is less linear than it seems. The curves around the wheel arches are, on closer inspection, organic, quite muscular bulges. That’s right, says Mindt, but according to him you only see them when you look closer. “I’ll tell you what the trick is. You can make a car ‘boxy’ in two ways: either with sharp lines, or as Ferrari did with the 330 P4.” That one is very round, but the eye sees sharpness and Mindt has the explanation for it. “The car has very delicate corners, like the point of an iron. They give your eyes something to hold on to. It doesn’t become a piece of soap, you keep your orientation options.” The ID1 is in that respect in the spirit of the Ferrari, Mindt explains. Corners subtly break the generous surfaces, so it doesn’t become massive or boring. “The connection between the round wheel arch arches and the front and rear screens is very delicate on the ID1. We worked hard to make something beautiful out of it. It’s not just round, it’s fused with the surface. That was a complicated process and it is not a simple shape.”
Such three-dimensional details are often color-sensitive. To what extent do colors determine the effect of the shape in the ID1? “Very strong. We chose a very high-quality color for the car you saw tonight. It had to look like a piece of gold. Moreover, it is the antipode of the ID2, while many people were afraid that it would look too much like it. So we said: let’s contrast the color as much as possible with that of the ID2.”
That was blue in Hamburg. This one became amber. “That color has to do with the character of the car. Amber is warm, human and sympathetic, and sympathetic is one of our basic values. It gives you a good feeling, exactly what we want to give the customers. Not something aggressive or intrusive. Many cars seem to want to attack you, but I want to make a friendly impression. That suits Volkswagen. Look at the Beetle, look at the Golf. It was happy design, always.”
The soul of the brand, he wants to say, determines the lines of the car. “You have to know what you are doing, let your goals coincide with those of the brand. The goal of Volkswagen is to build a reliable car that is stable, safe and sympathetic, but with something special that we call the secret sauce.” It shouldn’t be too crazy, a little spectacle is allowed. “Look at the track width of the ID1, which makes it look sporty; the car would do very well as a GTI.” But Volkswagen already had that in the Up era? “There are connections with the Up. We have the same target groups. Very young and old people, plus B-to-B people, the pizza deliverers and the like. But the Up was a bit frail, this one has much more potential.”
You can’t escape a screen and a camera at the back
What are we going to see inside the car? “You can’t escape a screen and a camera at the back, that will all be mandatory for small cars too. And then you can of course come up with all sorts of fun things for it. Then you can think of the Vintage Mode of the ID2, a retro screen with the old clocks from the 80s. Or a Star Wars Mode, or a Lego mode with Lego-like cars on your screen. Who knows what will still be possible with AI; I don’t want to promise too much, but you can go in all directions. For me, the future is rosy because we can design much more than before.”
A matter of feeling around, says Mindt, of feeling what people want. “First you look at the consumer and only then do you start designing. Trends are diverse, also within cultures. That applies to Europe, where you encounter a very different type of person in Finland than in Spain, but also to China, where I traveled around in recent weeks and where every city in every region turned out to be completely different.” In those regions, a Volkswagen may look a little different. Furthermore, a Volkswagen man must keep a cool head. “Sometimes trends are substantial, sometimes they blow over. Two years ago, screens from door to door were a hype, now nobody talks about it anymore. You just always have to ask yourself what makes sense and what doesn’t.”