Volkswagen will unveil the new all-electric ID. Tiguan in early October, although the company released photos of the new model cloaked in camouflage. The new ID. Tiguan arrives in Europe in early 2027 and eventually will come to North America. It will replace the ID.4 and ID.5 in Volkswagen’s lineup while living alongside the gasoline- and hybrid-powered Tiguan. Thus, Volkswagen will have two Tiguans: one burns fuel, the other burns electrons.
A Sales Heavyweight
The Tiguan is currently Volkswagen’s best-selling model worldwide and the best-selling model in the Volkswagen Group. Thomas Schäfer, CEO of the Volkswagen brand, points to the Tiguan’s considerable history as evidence that the name carries some weight. “More than 8.3 million Tiguan vehicles produced demonstrate the strength and trust associated with this model name,” Schäfer says.
And One That’s Not
Yet Volkswagen discontinued ID.4 production in Chattanooga in 2026, citing changed market conditions, while the company absorbed costs associated with shutting down production. The ID.4 was hardly a flop. It put Volkswagen into the mainstream electric-SUV business and found hundreds of thousands of buyers. But neither did it become the electric equivalent of the Beetle.
What’s In A Name? Plenty.
Meanwhile, Volkswagen says the ID.4 and ID.5 have accumulated more than 950,000 deliveries since 2021. The company clearly believes the time has come to take what it has learned from those cars and put it into a vehicle whose name people already know.
The automobile industry spent years inventing names that sounded like passwords — ID.4, Ioniq, Ariya, Lyriq, EV6 — and then wondered why customers couldn’t remember what they were. Volkswagen now appears to have concluded that perhaps customers would prefer something they can pronounce.
The Upshot
Yes, the future is electric. The name is familiar. The fake grille is presumably somewhere under the camouflage. And Volkswagen is betting that the easiest way to sell the brave new world is to put the old world’s name on it. After all, if the automobile industry is going to drag us into the electric future, it might as well provide directions.
