Volkswagen Plots Electric ID.Touareg as Successor to the Iconic SUV

Current Version Due To Be Discontinued

Long after its discontinuation in the United States, the Volkswagen Touareg is slated for the chopping block next year. But the SUV’s name could live on attached to a new all-electric model, according to a report from German publication Automobilwoche. Whether this new incarnation of the Touareg will reach the U.S. is another matter.

Automobilwoche reasons that, with Touareg production winding down, Volkswagen will have the capacity at its Bratislava, Slovakia, plant for a new EV and an SUV-shaped hole in its lineup. An electric replacement for the Touareg—named ID.Touareg, as part of VW’s new naming strategy—kills two birds with one stone.

Production Capacity Reshuffle

Volkswagen hasn’t officially confirmed a Touareg-sized electric SUV, but one would make sense at the current moment, the report argues. The automaker is focusing on smaller, more affordable models, but a bigger SUV in the same price range as the Touareg—which has always been one of the more expensive models in VW’s lineup—would help protect profit margins, the report notes.

If things go as Automobilwoche predicts, the ID.Touareg could be the first model based on VW’s next-generation Scalable Systems Platform (SSP) EV architecture to reach production. This platform was previously mooted for the next-generation e-Golf and the upcoming ID.Cross, but production of those models has been delayed as VW pushes back the funding to retool its Wolfsburg, Germany, plant for them.

Setting up production of the SSP models in Wolfsburg is also dependent on moving all internal-combustion Golf production to Mexico, while the current Touareg’s discontinuation would leave unused capacity in Bratislava. That could allow for an SSP production line to be set up there as soon as 2029, Automobilwoche estimates, although just this week Bloomberg reported that, even with delays, the e-Golf could still arrive by 2028.

Platform Divergence

The Touareg lasted in the U.S. from model years 2004 to 2017. While it gave VW an entry point into the burgeoning SUV market, the Touareg’s positioning as a premium-priced model without a premium badge restrained sales. Its lasting legacy was providing economies of scale for the Porsche Cayenne, helping ensure that the first Porsche SUV was a financial success.

Unlike the current Touareg, though, there probably won’t be any platform sharing. The upcoming Porsche Cayenne Electric, which is slated to debut later this year, is based on the Premium Platform Electric (PPE) architecture co-developed by Porsche and Audi. Use of PPE is likely to remained limited to those brands and, potentially, other high-end brands in the VW Group portfolio.

A larger SUV would give VW a competitor to the Hyundai Ioniq 9 and Kia EV9 in the U.S., but the automaker’s EV plans for this market appear to be largely in stasis. A next-generation ID.4—perhaps called the ID.Tiguan—is expected to launch in 2026, but beyond that VW hasn’t confirmed any new electric models for the U.S.