This is the new cheap Volkswagen EV for China, seen
on leaked patent drawings. It will use the Seat logo and Seat’s Chinese name.
The space for the square-shaped Seat badge is clearly visible on the grille.
The new Seat-badged Volkswagen EVs are made by a new
joint venture called JAC-Volkswagen. JAC, or Jianghuai Automobile Corporation,
already makes a series of small EVs, pretty good ones in fact. Volkswagen
earlier said it would make use of these cars’ platforms to underpin the EVs
made by the joint venture.
That made a lot of sense; why develop an all new
platform when you already have a good one, of the right size and for the right
market? But as we can see now, JAC-Volkswagen didn’t just use the platform, but
a whole car named
Volkswagen’s designers changed the front and
rear a bit to make it look more like a Seat, and they did a good job at that.
It even shows Seat’s recent design language, most notably at the ‘grille’, the
lights, and the bumper. But it really is just a JAC.
The iEV7S is an interesting car. It costs only
119.500 yuan after subsidies. It is powered by an electric motor with 116 hp
and 270 Nm, it has a range of 280 kilometers. All very impressive for the
segment so it is understandable that Volkswagen was interested. But they should
have tried harder to give it a more distinctive look; this is really just a
badge-job.
They did make an important change to the interior, they changed the shape of the air vents.
