New Volkswagen ID.3 Match 2025 review: attractive price boosts EV’s appeal

What must’ve been frustrating for VW’s engineers, who spent a huge amount of time, effort and money developing an all-new fully electric architecture, was that very few of our criticisms had anything to do with the fact that it was electric. Instead, the ID.3 was plagued by a range of small, niggling issues in areas that were previously taken for granted. We’d banged on for decades about how build quality and ergonomics were VW staples, but both were oddly absent.

To its credit, Volkswagen strived to address some of those issues. Take a look inside the latest models, for example – even this Match trim that sits towards the bottom of the ID.3 tree. feels a step up in quality from the earlier cars, with more soft-touch plastics, and smart interior textures lifting the overall ambience from what was offered previously. The ID.3’s open and airy cabin looks and feels smart enough in that typically tasteful VW way. 

It has always been impressively spacious, too; there’s more room in the back seats than a Golf and the boot is a near-identical 385 litres – even though the ID.3 is a smidge shorter on the outside. 

All the sour memories of glitchy, clunky infotainment systems have gone, too. Every model now comes with a 12.9-inch touchscreen, and while physical climate controls are still lacking, the on-screen temperature settings remain a permanent fixture on the base of the display. We’re still baffled by the dual function window switches which control both the front and rear windows – an answer to an ergonomic question that nobody outside of Volkswagen had even thought of asking – and the haptic buttons on the steering wheel still grate a little, too.