<story><title>Volkswagen unveils the ID.3, its first affordable long-range electric car</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/9/20857217/volkswagen-vw-id3-electric-price-specs-mile-range-frankfurt-motor-show-2019</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jwr</author><text>European here, trying to actually buy the thing. You can&amp;#x27;t. The first reservations will be fulfilled in the middle of 2020, but those will only be the mid-sized battery versions.&lt;p&gt;If you want the version with a larger battery, there is no firm ship date, but it is expected in 2021.&lt;p&gt;What I find somewhat amusing is that for the past months we&amp;#x27;ve been bombarded by a huge marketing campaign advertising a car that doesn&amp;#x27;t exist :-)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>adrianmonk</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;huge marketing campaign advertising a car that doesn&amp;#x27;t exist&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Maybe they want to make buyers hesitate on buying a Tesla Model 3 right now and wait until next year.&lt;p&gt;If you assume cars will sooner or later go electric, automakers would feel they need to capture part of that market to survive. The article says VW is making a &amp;quot;multibillion-dollar push&amp;quot;, so it seems likely that&amp;#x27;s their strategy.&lt;p&gt;So if all they get out of these ads is to put people into a holding pattern until 2020 to decide on VW or Tesla, that combats the threat of Tesla dominance, which in and of itself could be worth what VW spends on ads.</text></comment>
<story><title>Volkswagen unveils the ID.3, its first affordable long-range electric car</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/9/20857217/volkswagen-vw-id3-electric-price-specs-mile-range-frankfurt-motor-show-2019</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jwr</author><text>European here, trying to actually buy the thing. You can&amp;#x27;t. The first reservations will be fulfilled in the middle of 2020, but those will only be the mid-sized battery versions.&lt;p&gt;If you want the version with a larger battery, there is no firm ship date, but it is expected in 2021.&lt;p&gt;What I find somewhat amusing is that for the past months we&amp;#x27;ve been bombarded by a huge marketing campaign advertising a car that doesn&amp;#x27;t exist :-)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ratel</author><text>The possible reason to start the campaign now is that a big chunk of the market in Europe is business lease. New vehicles are not ordered in the last quarter of the year, because the resell value will drop if the car is a year old in three months. The lead time for cars ordered by employees is a bit longer than for regular customers. By building the hype over a new affordable EV which in quite some countries come with tax brakes they probably hope people will wait for the car to come out in Q2 and not have another one delivered in Q1.</text></comment>