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Volkswagen CEO reveals that the next-generation Golf will spawn an electric front-drive GTI and all-paw R
Volkswagen CEO Thomas Schafer has confirmed that a much-rumoured new-generation Golf GTI will be all electric and, as is tradition, it will be twinned by a flagship all-wheel-driven electric R flagship.
Speaking with UK outlet Autoexpress, Shafer revealed that the current internal combustion Golf lineage will carry through until the of this decade, after which a purely electric era will spawn go-fast GTI and go-faster R twins.
According to Shafer, development is well underway for the fully-electric front-drive ‘e-Golf’ GTI, a model Autoexpress quotes the VW CEO describing as “a monster”.
“At the end of the decade we will bring an electric Golf [GTI] and it will be a monster of a car,” Schafer is quoted as saying. “It has to be exciting. It has to be authentic. If we bring a GTI, it has to be a [true] GTI”.
It’s expected that the electric Golf GTI will follow on from the (smaller) ID.2 GTI, Volkswagen’s debut electric GTI, which has already been unveiled in concept form and is set for global release in 2026.
The report quotes Shafer as admitting to have driven the ID.2 GTI that, for its part, is “mind-blowing” in prototype guise, and that the ID.2 GTI will “set the benchmark for the new hot Golf”.
What separates the electric Golf GTI from its closest kin, the existing (Golf-sized) ID.3 GTX, is that the former will be front-drive while the latter is rear-drive only. The ID.3 GTX outputs 240kW in high-grade Performance guise.
Unlike the MEB-underpinned ID.3, it’s expected that the future-generation electric Golf GTI and R will be based on Volkswagen’s all-new 800-volt SSP architecture.
It’s expected that various brands across the Volkswagen Group, from Skoda to Lamborghini, will adopt the highly scalable SSP tool kit, with Shafer telling Autoexpress that SSP offers “the same modules of the key components {that can be used to] maximum scaling effect” across various vehicle and segment types.
Shafer would not be drawn into further details about the electric Golf generation or its go-faster variant guises: “We know what the vehicle looks like [but]…we have many iteration steps to get through.”
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