Volkswagen will discontinue the production of its small Up!, which is also offered with an electric drive. That means the tiny VW has been discontinued earlier than initially announced and will leave a gap in the VW model range for several years.

Production will end much earlier than previously planned. In May 2022, Hildegard Wortmann, then Group Sales Director, stated that the electric variant e-Up! would continue to be built until the end of 2025. The plan was that the series version of the ID.2 could then seamlessly take over as a small electric car.

First freeze, now stop

VW had imposed a “temporary” order freeze for the e-Up! in September 2020. The manufacturer only reopened the order books in February 2022. Two months later, however, the small electric vehicle, for which there are hardly any alternatives in the segment, was sold out again.

With the production stop for the Up!, the Polo is the smallest model built by VW. And that is likely to remain the case for quite some time. A subcompact car below the electric Polo’s successor, the ID.2 (planned for 2025) that could succeed the e-Up! is reportedly not scheduled until 2026 or 2027.

Cybersecurity issue

One day after the British magazine Autocar broke the news, VW officially confirmed the end of the Up!. “Production of the Up! and the e-Up! at the Volkswagen plant in Bratislava will end in the fourth quarter,” said a VW spokesperson. He added that they had already closed the order books in Germany.

Brand boss Thomas Schäfer added that the model’s discontinuation was also due to rules for cybersecurity in new cars, which will apply from mid-2024. That is why the Up! is being phased out. “Otherwise, we would have to integrate a completely new electronics architecture. That would be too expensive,” Schäfer told the German press agency DPA.