Enlarge / The VW ID.4 has a new drive motor and infotainment system for model-year 2024. It’s not the sportiest EV you can buy, but it remains one of our favorites to drive. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Volkswagen didn’t wait the traditional four model years before giving its ID.4 electric crossover something of a spiff-up. The tweaks to the model-year 2024 ID.4 are mostly under the skin or inside the cabin—like the recent refresh of the Polestar 2, this update was more about making the ID.4 an easier EV to live with, with more range and more power.

Volkswagen was one of the first automakers to react to Tesla finally making the electric vehicle viable. After the company-wide bet on diesel went up in a cloud of nitrogen oxides and black smoke, VW threw itself headlong into electrification as a way to meet ever-stricter carbon emissions regulations. Already an industry pioneer for the use of highly flexible vehicle architectures that let it build vehicles in a wide range of sizes and shapes with a common set of components and tools, it applied that approach to a line of electric vehicles, all branded under the Intelligent Design, or ID, name.

VW is a global automaker, but automobile tastes are often not global. For Europe, VW designed the ID.3, an electric hatchback that Americans who want forbidden fruit keep asking for, but which generated less than enthusiastic reviews from the people who actually got to buy them. Other models are optimized for China. But for America, with its adoration of the SUV and crossover, VW designed the ID.4.