If Rimac, Techrules, Faraday, or any number of unproven automakers that have shown a prototype racing concept are anything to go by, it’s apparently pretty easy to build a 1000-plus-hp electric car out of absolutely nothing. The Volkswagen I.D. R pictured here will be a real, fully running electric hypercar. It has to be, because it’s going to climb Pikes Peak.
Much is riding on Volkswagen’s factory effort in the annual Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, a motorsports event it has ignored since 1987. First, it wants to finish the entire 12.4-mile course, which a 652-hp Golf failed to do 31 years ago (to its credit, though, that Golf had two engines). Pikes Peak is also a very public demonstration—and hopefully for Wolfsburg executives, dramatic proof—that the company’s sudden switch to electric powertrains is a great idea. The I.D. R will be VW’s halo car for its entire I.D. series of EVs, which will include sedans, hatches, and a very familiar little bus, the first of which will be produced starting in late 2019.
VW won’t release any details other than these two renderings, which align with every Gran Turismo video-game fantasy car ever done. There may be no better wheelman for the I.D. R than Romain Dumas, a current Porsche factory driver, winner of the 2010 24 Hours of Le Mans in the Audi R15, and a three-time Pikes Peak champion who holds the second-fastest time up the mountain. VW wants Dumas to drive so fast in the Unlimited class that he beats Rhys Millen, who set the 8:57.118 record for electric prototypes in 2016.
Two other private Volkswagen entries will run the course, including a 2010 Jetta GLI in the Time Attack and a 1972 Beetle in the Open class. The Beetle is a diesel with the 2.0-liter TDI engine, and we bet that, very quietly, VW brass will be cheering the hell out of that car, too.
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