The way the sedan market continues to play out, mass-market automakers remaining in the segment are carving out one sedan to rule them all. For Volkswagen, it’s looking like the last four-door car standing will be the battery-electric ID.Aero. Showed in concept form over the summer, reports have put the slinky four-door on the Chinese market next year, followed by Europe and the U.S. sometime around the latter half of 2023. According to Automotive News, the arrival of the ID.Aero here will ring the last-lap bell for the Volkswagen Arteon sedan, which the publication says will die here in 2024.
The snazzy Arteon, a replacement for the almost-as-snazzy CC, has made a lot of smoke here but never fire. It debuted in 2019 in the U.S. and had its best sales last year, moving 5,337 units. Through the first six months of this year, however, VW dealers have sold 170 units. That’s not a typo. The automaker’s likely been prioritizing its better-selling models such as the Atlas, the crossover selling on average almost as many units in a day as the Arteon has in six months. Even the stalwart, fan favorite Jetta roams a smaller orbit, though, on track to do less than last year’s sales of just 55,113 units based on the first six months of this year, or roughly half of 2019’s 90,829 units.
In concept form, the Passat-sized sedan that replaces the Arteon fitted a 77-kWh battery and is estimated to get a range of 620 kilometers on Europe’s WLTP cycle, or 385 miles in the U.S. before subtracting a percentage for our more stringent EPA testing. The Aero’s swoopy sheetmetal hides the modular MEB platform that also underpins the ID.3, ID.4, and ID.Buzz, among other electric cars in the Volkswagen cosmos. There’s no word yet on drivetrain, but we’d expect front- and all-wheel-drive versions. We’re told the cabin is spacious, which you’d rightfully expect: The Aero stretches nearly 196 inches long, and it’s built on a relatively long wheelbase. It’s also possible the ID.Aero changes its name for production to a number like ID.7; the current moniker refers to the 0.23 coefficient of drag. And there’s a possibility it gets a wagon sibling, a production version of the ID.Space Vizzion.
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