Bojan Vrbnjak
ID.3, 4, 5, 7 and ID. Buzz: Any electric car enthusiast is probably familiar with these Volkswagen ID models. Maybe also ID.6 from China. But ID.Unix? We've never heard of him, at least we haven't. This is reason enough to introduce this model.
At the Beijing Motor Show (late April to early May 2024), the car was presented as a study. At the time, our colleagues from the Brazilian portal InsideEVs published images and information about the car, which the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) had already published before the show (see images at the bottom of this article). In the meantime, official information from the VW company also appeared. If you thought you recognized this body after looking at the pictures, you were not entirely wrong. VW ID.Unyx is Volkswagen's version of the Cupra Tavascan.
VW ID.Unyx – Exterior
ID. Unyx is the first model of the new sub-brand with the same name. This will include five new electric cars that will be introduced to the Chinese market by 2027, as VW has now confirmed. Among them will be SUVs and sedans. With this initiative, Volkswagen clearly wants to catch up with its competitor BYD in the Middle Kingdom.
VW ID.Unyx and Cupra Tavascan
The ID.Unyx is expected to go on sale in China in 2024. Compared to its sister model, the resemblance to the Cupra Tavascan (made in China) is clearly recognizable. Only the front bumper, the inside of the headlights and the wheel rims are different. As with the Tavascan, the A-pillars and B-pillars are black, making them blend in with the background – with a bit of imagination, the result is a (racing) helmet look.
VW ID.Unyx and Cupra Tavascan
There are also many similarities at the rear - such as the light strip across the entire vehicle and the illuminated logo in the middle - but there are also differences between them. For example, the Chinese version of the VW has a large, shiny black section on the bottom, which is shaped differently than the Cupra version. Similar to the Tavascan, the Unyx is 4.663mm long, 1.860mm wide and 1.610mm tall; wheelbase is 2.766 mm.
VW has now also released images of the Unyx cockpit. There is an instrument display and a 15-inch touchscreen and a head-up display. Basically, the car is also very similar to the Tavascan on the inside, although the additional steering wheel heads are missing, and the center console and steering wheel look slightly different.
VW ID.Unyx and Cupra Tavascan
The VW ID.Unyx has two different drive systems. According to VW, the rear-wheel-drive model has 210kW and is equipped with the familiar 77kWh battery, while the all-wheel-drive model has 250kW. This is the same performance data as the Tavascan model. CarNewsChina, however, reported that the rear-wheel-drive model only has 170kW, while the front-wheel-drive model has an 80kW engine. How this difference can be explained remains an open question.
VW ID.Unyx – Interior
Like the Tavascan, the Unyx is produced by Volkswagen Anhui in Hefei, a joint venture between VW and the Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Group, better known as JAC. When the company was founded in 2017, the two partners had equal shares, and in 2020, Volkswagen increased its share to 75 percent. The Cupra Tavascan model is exclusively for export, while the ID.Unyx is made for China.
VW ID.Unyx with gold VW logo
As the first model to feature the gold VW logo, the ID.Unyx fits well with Volkswagen's 'In China, for China' strategy. As part of this strategy, VW also wants to introduce new architectures, such as the China Electrical Architecture (CEA), which was developed in collaboration with Xpeng. On this basis, two new models will be developed for China. Volkswagen hopes this will result in production costs 40 percent lower than for cars on the MEB platform.
