Make no mistake when you watch the video below. It starts amusingly, showing that the Ford Mustang Mach-E drives even in a very stripped – or lightweight – version. But it actually means war. We have no idea where Sandy Munro heard he did not know anything about engineering, but we bet it was from someone at Volkswagen, talking about the ID.4 teardown. To strike back, he showed why he thinks the electric crossover from the German company suffers from poor engineering.
Munro was disappointed from day one with the fact that the ID.4 offers no frunk. Already used to Teslas and even to the Mach-E, he thought it was a waste not to put all the components that are under the hood of the electric crossover somewhere else. In the Ford, they are mainly behind the instrument panel (IP, as they call it in the video).
What Munro did was to compare the ID.4 and the Mach-E to show Volkswagen could have done the same thing with its EV. He showed what lies behind the IP in both vehicles, and there’s almost nothing on the ID.4, while Ford’s electric crossover has multiple components placed there to save space for the front cargo compartment.
It would be fantastic if Volkswagen gave its reasons to have adopted this kind of approach with its MEB vehicles. What comes to mind is that squeezing the components behind the instrument panel could affect comfort or safety. However, all ICE vehicles have parts hidden by the IP, and we many aced safety tests. Would Volkswagen have chosen to make servicing its EVs a more manageable task? We have no idea.
Munro ends his video by saying he believes that Volkswagen just preferred a lazy approach. Instead of picking what was better for customers, it chose what was easy to deliver, hence the lack of frunk. We’d ask Volkswagen about this if we had any hope to hear something other than “no comment.” Let us know what you think about this in the comment section.
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