Buyers will have a choice of four power levels from a front-mounted motor.
This will top out at 223bhp in its most potent form, badged the ID Polo GTI – the first time the GTI badge has adorned an EV. It follows last year’s ID GTI concept.
Volkswagen has also confirmed the ID Polo’s dimensions: it will be 4053mm long, 1816mm wide and 1530mm tall. This makes it only slightly larger than the ICE Polo and nearly identical to the new Renault 4 EV.
Inside, it will use a 12.9in infotainment touchscreen and a 10.9in digital driver display, while adopting physical switches for the audio and climate controls.
Volkswagen is aiming to eradicate all glue and hard plastics from its next-generation interiors, in line with a pledge to boost material quality while reducing its cars’ environmental impacts.
The introduction of the ID Polo and ID Cross names brings to an end the numeric naming Volkswagen has used for its ID models since the launch of the ID 3 in 2020.
Volkswagen admits that the system has failed to achieve the clarity it had hoped for, often leaving customers confused about how the EVs relate to their ICE counterparts.
While sharing names and being sold alongside each other, Volkswagen’s EVs and ICE cars will be technically unrelated and have separate styles.