This upcoming vehicle could be a sedan that would be badged ID.4
The Trinity project is said to be a technological flagship for the company
Production is expected to start around 2026
Volkswagen is working on an upcoming electric car currently called Project Trinity, which could be aimed directly at the Tesla Model 3.
This means that it will most likely be a sedan, despite reports that say it will be badged ID.4, like the current electric crossover.
The ID.4 family will apparently be expanded to add this model alongside the current one, instead of giving the Trinity its own name.
Curiously, this is not because the Trinity will share its structure and most of its parts with the current ID.4 since it will be built on a completely new platform.
Indeed, the Trinity code-name was chosen because this new vehicle will represent three new elements for Volkswagen: A highly automated assembly, artificial intelligence-enabled autonomous features, and a new platform.
This new vehicle will thus abandon the MEB platform on which the current Volkswagen EVs are built in favor of the all-new SSP platform. This change will bring the possibility of an 800-volt architecture instead of the current 400-volt systems, which could theoretically cut charging times in half.
This will not be the only advancements made in this vehicle since its maker envisions it as a technological flagship that will include all of the latest technologies developed by the company.
One of those technologies is the vehicle-to-everything (V2x) communications which will allow the vehicle to communicate with other vehicles as well as the road system itself.
This is an important development for autonomous vehicles, and Volkswagen claims this model will be capable of level-4 autonomous driving, higher than any vehicle on the roads today. This feature will not be available at launch, however.
The last of the three new elements the Trinity will bring is a modernized assembly process that is highly automated. This means that fewer employees will be required to manufacture the vehicles, thus reducing the costs and improving the efficiency of the process.
A new factory in Wolfsburg, Germany will be built to accommodate these new processes and Volkswagen says it will be ready to launch this ID.4 sedan in 2026, for a price of about 35,000 Euros.
