But enormity seemingly comes at no physical cost. Let us explain.
One of the major benefits of electric mobility comes in the form of packaging. Without the need to accommodate an engine and a related drivetrain, cars actually provide acres of space, which allows carmakers to flex their packaging muscles and truly make the most of all the room that they’d previously have surrendered to powertrain gubbins.
Such an example of that is the ID Roomzz, Volkswagen’s new EV-SUV concept that’s debuted just early of Auto Shanghai in, uh, Shanghai. While this concept is clearly a 4-seater, there’s actually enough interior room to fit three rows of seats, despite it occupying not much more room than a Tiguan 7-seater.
“This SUV is a monolith, appearing to be seamlessly machined from one solid block. The battery-powered ID Rooms moves effortlessly, silently and without emissions.” – Klaus Bischoff, Chief Designer (Volkswagen), Volkswagen AG
What they’re also proud of is the interior which, when the car is switched to ID.Pilot autonomous-driving mode, can swivel its seats to face inwards to create a more communicative environment. The all-glass panel, in place of a traditional dashboard, also facilitates the seamless transition from hands-on to hands-off transportation.
Further enhancing the hands-off experience is the highly-customisable cabin, which Volkswagen says can create a lounge-like atmosphere on board. This is made that much more accessible (quite literally) by the sliding door mechanism, which slides the front and rear doors out of the way making for excellent ingress and egress.
The ID Roomzz is powered by an 82kWh battery, capable of hitting 450km in a single charge (according to the WLTP test cycle). With a 150kW DC charger, the Roomzz can recharge from 0-80% in just 30-minutes or so. This will be helpful if you’re making full use of the 225kW powertrain, which can rocket this big SUV from rest to 100km/h in 6.6-seconds.
The ID Roomzz will be presented in its entirety at the upcoming Auto Shanghai show which will open its doors on the 18th of April. What we don’t have to wait for is the fact that this is a precursor to a production car that should be in Chinese showrooms by 2021. Whether it’ll remain China-only or if it’ll eventually make it to other markets we don’t know, but it’d be pretty dumb not to offer this to a wider market, no?
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