Volkswagen ID.3 review

The range is fairly simple – that's range as in choice of models, not range as in how far you can drive before the battery is flat. The Pure, Pro and Pro S labels determine your battery size and motor power, and then for each of those there are 'Essential' and 'Match' trims.

When the facelift first arrived your only options were Pro and Pro S, but now that the Pure has arrived with its smaller battery and less powerful motor, you're looking at a respectable £30,860 entry price for the Essential trim.

That brings you LED lights, steel wheels, cloth seats, plenty of USB-C sockets and the 12.9in central infotainment screen. Upgrade to Match and you get 18in alloy wheels (which knock one mile off the WLTP range), tinted glass, navigation, wireless Apple CarPlay/Android Auto, a rear-view camera and two-zone climate control. That'll set you back £32,220.

Essential trim on the Pro gets you the 59kWh battery and 201bhp motor, but most of the kit is the same as the Pure so you'll still be rolling on steel wheels for your £35,740. You can decide whether that's a good thing or not.

The Pro Match is £36,660 and gets all the same kit as the Pure Match, but also adds keyless entry, Matrix LED headlights and extra ambient lighting.

The big battery Pro S in Essential trim is a little better equipped than the other Essentials, with 20in alloy wheels, LED headlights and automatic high beams. That'll set you back £39,230, while the fully loaded Pro S Match will get you just £60 change from £40k. Worth remembering that this one will rapid charge at 185kW though, while the Pro maxes out at 165kW and the Pure at 145kW.

Rather stingily, VW wants an extra £1,150 for a heat pump that reduces range loss when you run the cabin heating in winter. Most rivals have it as standard. The full driver assist pack is an extra £2,240. Adaptive suspension is £955, a pack with massaging sports seats up front, an augmented reality head-up display and a Harman Kardon sound system is a whopping £3,865 and a panoramic glass roof is £795. You could run the price up all too easily.

What about finance offers?

You can get into a boggo ID.3 for £312 per month on a three-year deal with a £6,172 deposit at the time of writing. That'll give you a 10,000 mile limit too and there's 0 per cent APR.

HOW'S THE REAL-WORLD RANGE?

After the recent updates we've only spent proper time in the entry-level ID.3 Pure in its most basic Essential trim, and on first impressions it would seem that this does wonders for the hatchback's efficiency. On a mixed run of town, country and motorway miles we saw an impressive 4.7 miles per kWh. Admittedly that was in perfect 20 degree conditions, but it also included a fair bit of air conditioning use and some spirited driving in Sport mode. Extrapolate this and you're looking at a real world range of around 244 miles, which is actually ever so slightly more than the 241 miles WLTP that Volkswagen claims.

Servicing is every two years with no mileage condition – a sign of the simplicity of EVs. Warranty is three years/60,000 miles, and it's an eight-year 100,000 mile battery warranty to 70 per cent capacity.