Volkswagen Bids Farewell To the Beetle One Last Time

This is likely the reason Volkswagen has chosen to depict a Latin American boy, who then turns into a teenager, a man, and eventually a senior citizen in a farewell video titled The Last Mile | Beetle.

Spoiler alert: there will be no spoilers in this article, but we have to talk about the ending credits. The first of two captions tells us that "where one road ends, another begins." That might indicate the Beetle will come back on the MEB platform for electric vehicles, but we wouldn't hold our breath about this possibility. As for the second, "drive bigger" means a lot of things if you're accustomed to PR talk.

A buggy-style I.D. concept was revealed in Geneva at the beginning of March 2019, and Volkswagen hasn't confirmed nor denied if there's any business case to be made for a series-production model with Beetle influences. On the other hand, Volkswagen hasn't left all of its past glories behind. The I.D. Buzz, for example, previews the return of the Microbus with an all-electric powertrain in 2022 with a 111-kWh battery pack.

While all that's nice and everything, the elephant in the room has to be addressed. Can Volkswagen be Volkswagen without the Beetle in the lineup? The simple answer to that is "yes" because people and companies have to move on, delivering what the market wants.

Utility vehicles and EVs are the biggest priorities for the Volkswagen Group in the mid-term future, exemplified by the ID.3 compact hatchback and ID.4 compact crossover. Autonomous driving technologies are also important for the German manufacturer, and as you might have read in a previous story, Volkswagen also bets big on selling software.

On an ending note, we're sad to see the Beetle go. Poor sales and a lack of innovative features are the reasons that ultimately led to the downfall of the model that turned Volkswagen into the automotive giant it is today.