Volkswagen ID 5 GTX review

What’s it like?

Still, this is an impressively quick car, and no doubt about it – which is surprising really, because in terms of power-to-weight, with 136bhp per tonne, it’s roughly on a par with your average family hatchback.

The ID 5 GTX serves up its power instantly and constantly up to a relatively high tail-off point, meaning it can effectively all be exploited all of the time. It’s not pin-you-back-in-your-seat fast but certainly feels worthy of a more sporting moniker, at least by virtue of its superior straight-line pace compared with the rear-driven Pro Performance.

There’s also a reassuring surefootedness to the way the ID 5 GTX threads itself down a twisty road. What the steering lacks in feel and communication it makes up for in precision and predictability, which means more engaging stretches of Tarmac can at least be tackled with speed and confidence, if not wilful abandon.

With the chunky underfloor battery giving a low centre of gravity and weight shared fairly across both axles, there’s more than a hint of dynamic agility to exploit, particularly given how easy it is to build speed between corners. 

Sitting 15mm closer to the ground on uniquely tuned suspension, the ID 5 GTX can be tipped into bends at a good lick without giving way overtly to lateral movement, responding quickly, accurately and predictably to turn-in.

The tangible input of the four-wheel-drive system’s torque-vectoring capacity (it’s rear-biased as standard) means you can almost feel the car rotating around you, which can feel fun in the right scenario, but more often these are welcome traits because of the sheer ease and amenability they bring to the driving experience.

The uncommunicative brake pedal will take some familiarisation, but stay out of Sport driving mode and you soon find the regenerative effect is effective enough to shed speed as required - with the added benefit of slowing battery depletion. 

If the ID 5 GTX’s dynamics win out over rivals anywhere, though, it’s in confronting those everyday obstacles  – unfinished roads, potholes, expansion joints and speedbumps – that so often highlight the inherent rigidity of a skateboard-style architecture.

At no point on a lengthy mixed route did our ID 5 GTX feel any less composed or more compromised than the conventionally fuelled Volkswagen Tiguan (or even the softer single-motor ID 5). 

And while the absence of a combustion engine usually exacerbates the effects of tyre and wind roar, their inteference with the ID 5’s rolling refinement is minimal at best. 

The ID 5 is the first car to roll out of the factory equipped with the latest generation of Volkswagen's oft-lambasted Software 3.0 platform. The firm touts the upgraded charging capacity of this new system (introduced to the Volkswagen ID 3 and ID 4 via over-the-air update) as a headline improvement, but already 135kW is starting to feel a touch lethargic when some of its closest rivals with 800V hardware can muster supersonic 350kW top-ups. 

But it also gets an advanced route-mapping function that can ensure you reach your destination with a predetermined amount of charge left in the battery by planning a route that takes in a specific number of charging stations and calculates exactly how long needs to be spent at each. Plus, we found the rate of discharge to be impressively predictable, which is to say largely unfazed by repeated variations in speed or brief spells of spirited driving - meaning a real-world range of 250 miles is well within reach. 

Also impressive is the new Park Assist Plus package, which can remember complex parking manoeuvres of up to 50 metres so that you can stop park outside your house, press a button and relax as the car threads itself between the neighbours’ cars, up the driveway, around the flowerbed and into its designated spot.

But while Volkswagen says it has listened to customers' feedback in rolling out new functions as part of this latest generation of software, the fact remains that the system simply requires too much interaction to be used effectively on the move.

The touch-sensitive control sliders for the climate and audio volume give no haptic feedback and are still unlit, so both day and night they take a good deal of your attention off the road ahead. And with all the other functions buried in touchscreen menus, you quickly learn that it’s better to make sure everything is set up before you set off. 

Should I buy one?

The ID 5 will be a lot of things to a lot of people: tech-heavy, practical, easy to rub along with, decent to look at and – in GTX form – a sufficiently potent and engaging steer.

The trouble will be the rivals it faces that can be all those things (and perhaps a few more besides) at this price point and some way below it. The closest-matched variant of the similarly sized Kia EV6, for example, brings a touch more power to the table, a more dynamically rewarding chassis and roughly the same range for around £10,000 less.