1st EV Casualty of Trump Election: Volkswagen ID.7?

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There are reports that the Volkswagen ID.7 is the first EV casualty of the new administration and his plan to cut EV incentives. Volkswagen has decided to drop its plan to bring the ID.7 to North America. It’s a huge shame, as the ID.7 is the company’s flagship EV model and it’s selling very well in Europe — and even came in second place in the competition for 2024 CleanTechnica Car of the Year–Europe.

The ID. 7 has become Europe’s 6th best selling EV, only trailing Tesla’s two popular models, the Skoda Enyaq, the Volkswagen ID.4, and the Volvo EX30 (the winner of the 2024 CleanTechnica Car of the Year–Europe award). However, Americans aren’t big on buying sedans at the moment, the ID.7 wouldn’t be cheap, and as already noted, Trump looks intent on hurting the EV market in the US — and we don’t know all the details of that yet.

That said, I’m not so sure the ID.7 is the first casualty. I think some other automakers made decisions ahead of time, more quietly perhaps, to not develop or release certain EV models here in the US. Even back when Biden was running for office and his chances of winning seemed extremely slim, I think automakers started making such decisions in order to not make a business mistake or get on Trump’s bad side — but more the former than the latter. Companies hate uncertainty in a market, and Trump is bringing a lot of uncertainty to the EV market.

On that matter, the ID.7 was actually postponed for the US in May 2024. So, perhaps Volkswagen was already considering the election. “However, preparations were in full swing for the announced start of deliveries in the third quarter of 2024, and Volkswagen of America published the offer structure for the ID.7 at the end of March,” electrive writes. “Volkswagen wanted to offer two equipment variants, each of which could be ordered with rear or all-wheel drive. However, pricing and the official EPA range were not yet known and were supposed to be announced after the launch.”

This is also probably another hit to Volkswagen factory jobs in Germany. “The change of plans for North America is presumably also bad news for the Emden plant in Germany, as there were no plans for North American production of the ID.7. That means that the vehicles for the US market would probably have had to be manufactured in Emden, as was once the case with the ID.4. In view of the political tensions between China and the US, it is unlikely that the China version would have been exported to the US.”

Of course, overall, the US EV market is not the best in the world. It has not been a major market for most electric vehicles also sold in Europe or China. It’s also still heavily lopsided toward Tesla, even though Tesla’s share has dropped from about 80% to about 45% of EV sales. Overall, though, it’s clear that Donald Trump taking office is bad for the electric vehicle market since he is extremely opposed to clean technologies of all kinds, including electric vehicles.

Unfortunately, we won’t get to test out the Volkswagen ID.7 in the US. But maybe that will change again someday down the road….