VW will keep its ‘iconic’ names when it goes electric, says boss

You can breathe a sigh of relief – the Golf, Tiguan and GTI badges are safe, says Volkswagen brand boss Thomas Schäfer, while others will be discussed on a case by case basis. Well, we're far less bothered about the Tiguan, but it is VW's bestselling car across the world.

Schäfer was speaking at the Munich motor show, where the company’s ID.GTI concept was revealed as a taster of how an electric GTI model would look in the future, with a hot hatch version of the new ID.2 EV arriving in 2027.

The German company’s CEO said that there was an internal discussion about whether the upcoming ID.2 should be badged as a Golf, but Schäfer said that while the interior space was Golf-like, the exterior dimensions didn’t match up. “It’s not 100 per cent a Golf,” he said, so the company went with the ID themed name.

He noted that a refreshed Golf will appear in 2024 and that the firm plans to build an electric Golf when its new SSP platform arrives after 2028: “That will be a true Golf, no compromise.”

Will the ID badging get ditched? “It was necessary at the time, but we probably don’t need it in the future,” he said. “We’re not clear whether we’ll drop it completely or keep it for some models.”

He also said that the company hadn’t yet decided whether the Golf and ID.3 models would be merged or not. The ID.3 has just been given a facelift, but it doesn’t seem likely that the firm will replace it with a new generation without changing the shape significantly.