[supra93]

It released sketches to preview the model

Volkswagen developed the ID.3 as an electric alternative to the Golf. It's offered only as a four-door hatchback, but several members of the company's top brass expressed their wish to see a convertible variant join the range.

Ralf Brandstätter, the CEO of Volkswagen Passenger Cars, posted a pair of sketches that depict an ID.3 Cabriolet on his personal LinkedIn page. Volkswagen boss Herbert Diess published the same set of sketches on Twitter, so it's not a case of an executive randomly letting his imagination run wild. These are official Volkswagen images, and Diess confirmed the project is under consideration before asking his followers to share their thoughts on the model.

Painted in a distinctive shade of green worn by the ID.3 at launch, the convertible model loses more than its roof; it also sheds a pair of doors. Short overhangs on both ends and the steeply-raked windshield remain. The sketches don't show the car with the roof up, so we don't know if it's fitted with a cloth soft top or with a folding hard top.

Neither executive revealed if the ID.3 was designed with a convertible off-shoot in mind, but we're betting that chopping its roof would be easier and more straightforward than making a convertible variant of, say, the 2022 GTI thanks to the basic layout of the electric powertrain. The lithium-ion battery pack is stuffed directly under the passenger compartment, and it's integrated into the modular MEB platform so it helps increase the car's rigidity.

If the ID.3 Cabriolet receives the proverbial green light for production, it could join the Volkswagen lineup during the first half of the 2020s. Whether it will be sold in the United States, where the standard hatchback is not available, remains to be seen. Keep in mind that even a top executive can't bring a car to production by firing off a tweet, however. Ultimately, the odds of seeing a roof-less ID.3 in showrooms on either side of the pond depend largely on how much the model will cost to develop and build and how much demand exists for an electric convertible.

Volkswagen has a decades-long history of making convertibles, starting with drop-top variants of the venerable Beetle often developed and built by various coachbuilders, but none have been battery-powered. Its electric car offensive tentatively included a toned-down production version of the ID.Buggy concept introduced in 2019 until it announced finding a partner to split development and manufacturing costs was easier said than done. As of writing, the only roofless Volkswagen available new is the T-Roc crossover sold on the European market.

https://www.autoblog.com/2021/03/01/...ible-sketches/

[Burrcold]

I actually think this would do quite well.