You’re out of free articles.
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
Sign In or Create an Account.
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Welcome to Heatmap
Thank you for registering with Heatmap. Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our lives, a force reshaping our economy, our politics, and our culture. We hope to be your trusted, friendly, and insightful guide to that transformation. Please enjoy your free articles. You can check your profile here .
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Subscribe to get unlimited Access
Hey, you are out of free articles but you are only a few clicks away from full access. Subscribe below and take advantage of our introductory offer.
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Create Your Account
Please Enter Your Password
Forgot your password?
Please enter the email address you use for your account so we can send you a link to reset your password:
One of Volkswagen’s most iconic cars has a post-gasoline future.
Porsche salespeople, college girls, horsepower-obsessed tuners, lawyers, journalists, avowed street racers, moms and dads, and wealthy businesspeople — all are folks I’ve met in my travels who have owned Volkswagen Golf GTIs. It’s rare to see such a radically diverse group of car owners. But the GTI has spent nearly 50 years delivering driving joy in a surprisingly affordable and practical package, so its appeal has stretched far and wide.
Now, this automotive icon will have a future beyond gasoline as well, and that’s worth getting excited about.
This weekend at the IAA Mobility Show in Munich, Volkswagen debuted the ID.GTI Concept: essentially a preview of an all-electric GTI to come soon. While “concept cars” in the automotive world can often represent wild ideas or meager previews of far-flung things car companies might want to do, VW has confirmed the ID.GTI will go into production in a few years. And like the gasoline-powered GTI’s relationship to the Golf, the electric ID.GTI is essentially a faster, better-handling, better-equipped version of the Volkswagen ID.2all unveiled a few months ago. For fans of exciting cars that don’t command six-figure price tags, it’s hard to overstate what a big deal an electric GTI would be.
An image of the ID.GTI Concept.Courtesy of Volkswagen
It’s also hard to overstate the importance of the GTI to the automotive landscape. If you want something fun to drive, but need some actual trunk space or have to get the kids to school on time, the so-called “hot hatchback” — essentially a practical, roomy economy car given a more powerful engine and other enhancements — is a great way to go. And the GTI is the O.G. of the hot hatch world, the car that started it all. Launched in 1976 as a powered-up version of the humble Golf, the GTI was an immediate hit that helped VW move past the ancient Beetle and Microbus and into a modern, safer and more efficient era of driving.
Even as the GTI launched the hot hatch segment and inspired a raft of competitors from nearly every car company, over the decades it has consistently racked up awards from motoring journalists, built up a huge community of loyal fans, and became a car-modifying scene unto itself. At almost any given car show, you’ll see a GTI (or even just a Golf) that’s been painted wild colors, covered in stickers, lowered, fitted with outrageous wheels, received an unhinged engine transplant, or all of the above; people do crazy stuff to these cars.
Or they just drive them to the office and have a spirited drive on the weekends. That’s the magic of the GTI; it’s an “all of the above” option in ways that cars like the Mazda Miata and Chevrolet Camaro can’t match.
All the while, the GTI has kept its relatively humble price tag — the current one starts at a very reasonable $30,530 — and its focus on fuel economy. It’s always offered thrills with a high-tech four-cylinder engine (and briefly, an unusually small V6 option), eschewing the huge gas-guzzling motors typical of other performance cars.
But times are changing. Good fuel economy doesn’t cut it anymore. Emissions rules are getting tougher globally as the end of internal combustion can be seen on the horizon. Partially in penance for its diesel-cheating sins, VW is going all-electric in the coming years. Plus, attitudes are changing, too; this year, the Austrian town that for decades hosted a massive GTI meetup (think a giant music festival, but for modified Volkswagens) canceled the event out of environmental concerns. VW had to save the day by moving it to its headquarters in Wolfsburg.
The ID.GTI might be a far more welcome sight instead. Though no specifics around power (or range) have been released yet, as an electric car the ID.GTI will almost certainly be the quickest GTI ever. VW says it can even electronically emulate the driving feel and noises of the vintage ones. In other words, if you owned a GTI in the ‘80s or 2000s, this one can sound just like it. The concept keeps a number of must-haves from past GTIs, too, like the tartan plaid seats, red trim on the grille and the “Golf ball” gear shifter — here, that’s a control module that lets you adjust how the car drives.
The ID.GTI likely won’t go on sale until 2027, Car and Driver predicts. But Americans may have reasons to mark their calendars whenever we get an official date. Earlier this year, Volkswagen gave a hard “no” when asked if the ID.2all would ever come to our shores. You can thank the U.S. car market being overwhelmingly dominated by large trucks and SUVs for that.
But will the ID.GTI come to America? “The answer is … we’re looking into it,” a VW spokesperson told me. That fits with past precedent. The base Golf was discontinued for America a few years ago, but the GTI (and its more powerful, more expensive big brother the Golf R) remains on sale here. That’s because there’s still a market for VW’s fun hot hatches here; I’d wager the GTI has eclipsed the Golf itself in America in terms of popularity and prominence.
I believe there’s absolutely a market for a fun, affordable electric hot hatch in America too, especially if VW can find ways to get battery and production costs down over the next few years. Look at the great sales year the Tesla Model 3 is having; same with the soon-to-be-discontinued (and then revived) Chevrolet Bolt, or the considerable hype around the ultra-compact Volvo EX30. Americans would drive cheap EVs if we had the chance, and if we want to lower emissions across the board, we can’t count on $60,000 SUVs to do it. There is no reason to believe that an electric GTI couldn’t be a hit just like the original one was, even if its Golf sibling doesn’t make it here.
But for me, there’s an even deeper appeal to the ID.GTI. I try to draw a line between car culture — traffic-clogged cities, long commutes, no public transit, the prioritization of driving over biking and walking — and car enthusiast culture. The latter is something that, while far from perfect, is a force that drives diverse communities, creates lasting bonds and is filled with people eager to help each other out. I don’t want to see car enthusiast culture die with gasoline; rather, I’d like to see gearheads lead the charge for a cleaner, better, smarter future.
And if the Volkswagen GTI — the ride of choice for everyday people who want occasional backroad fun and the “Yes, this should have 1,000 horsepower and sit just three inches off the ground” crowd alike — can help make that happen, it deserves an electric future.
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
New York City may very well be the epicenter of this particular fight.
It’s official: the Moss Landing battery fire has galvanized a gigantic pipeline of opposition to energy storage systems across the country.
As I’ve chronicled extensively throughout this year, Moss Landing was a technological outlier that used outdated battery technology. But the January incident played into existing fears and anxieties across the U.S. about the dangers of large battery fires generally, latent from years of e-scooters and cellphones ablaze from faulty lithium-ion tech. Concerned residents fighting projects in their backyards have successfully seized upon the fact that there’s no known way to quickly extinguish big fires at energy storage sites, and are winning particularly in wildfire-prone areas.
How successful was Moss Landing at enlivening opponents of energy storage? Since the California disaster six months ago, more than 6 gigawatts of BESS has received opposition from activists explicitly tying their campaigns to the incident, Heatmap Pro® researcher Charlie Clynes told me in an interview earlier this month.
Matt Eisenson of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Law agreed that there’s been a spike in opposition, telling me that we are currently seeing “more instances of opposition to battery storage than we have in past years.” And while Eisenson said he couldn’t speak to the impacts of the fire specifically on that rise, he acknowledged that the disaster set “a harmful precedent” at the same time “battery storage is becoming much more present.”
“The type of fire that occurred there is unlikely to occur with modern technology, but the Moss Landing example [now] tends to come up across the country,” Eisenson said.
Some of the fresh opposition is in rural agricultural communities such as Grundy County, Illinois, which just banned energy storage systems indefinitely “until the science is settled.” But the most crucial place to watch seems to be New York City, for two reasons: One, it’s where a lot of energy storage is being developed all at once; and two, it has a hyper-saturated media market where criticism can receive more national media attention than it would in other parts of the country.
Someone who’s felt this pressure firsthand is Nick Lombardi, senior vice president of project development for battery storage company NineDot Energy. NineDot and other battery storage developers had spent years laying the groundwork in New York City to build out the energy storage necessary for the city to meet its net-zero climate goals. More recently they’ve faced crowds of protestors against a battery storage facility in Queens, and in Staten Island endured hecklers at public meetings.
“We’ve been developing projects in New York City for a few years now, and for a long time we didn’t run into opposition to our projects or really any sort of meaningful negative coverage in the press. All of that really changed about six months ago,” Lombardi said.
The battery storage developer insists that opposition to the technology is not popular and represents a fringe group. Lombardi told me that the company has more than 50 battery storage sites in development across New York City, and only faced “durable opposition” at “three or four sites.” The company also told me it has yet to receive the kind of email complaint flood that would demonstrate widespread opposition.
This is visible in the politicians who’ve picked up the anti-BESS mantle: GOP mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa’s become a champion for the cause, but mayor Eric Adams’ “City of Yes” campaign itself would provide for the construction of these facilities. (While Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani has not focused on BESS, it’s quite unlikely the climate hawkish democratic socialist would try to derail these projects.)
Lombardi told me he now views Moss Landing as a “catalyst” for opposition in the NYC metro area. “Suddenly there’s national headlines about what’s happening,” he told me. “There were incidents in the past that were in the news, but Moss Landing was headline news for a while, and that combined with the fact people knew it was happening in their city combined to create a new level of awareness.”
He added that six months after the blaze, it feels like developers in the city have a better handle on the situation. “We’ve spent a lot of time in reaction to that to make sure we’re organized and making sure we’re in contact with elected officials, community officials, [and] coordinated with utilities,” Lombardi said.
And more on the biggest conflicts around renewable energy projects in Kentucky, Ohio, and Maryland.
1. St. Croix County, Wisconsin - Solar opponents in this county see themselves as the front line in the fight over Trump’s “Big Beautiful” law and its repeal of Inflation Reduction Act tax credits.
2. Barren County, Kentucky - How much wood could a Wood Duck solar farm chuck if it didn’t get approved in the first place? We may be about to find out.
3. Iberia Parish, Louisiana - Another potential proxy battle over IRA tax credits is going down in Louisiana, where residents are calling to extend a solar moratorium that is about to expire so projects can’t start construction.
4. Baltimore County, Maryland – The fight over a transmission line in Maryland could have lasting impacts for renewable energy across the country.
5. Worcester County, Maryland – Elsewhere in Maryland, the MarWin offshore wind project appears to have landed in the crosshairs of Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency.
6. Clark County, Ohio - Consider me wishing Invenergy good luck getting a new solar farm permitted in Ohio.
7. Searcy County, Arkansas - An anti-wind state legislator has gone and posted a slide deck that RWE provided to county officials, ginning up fresh uproar against potential wind development.
Talking local development moratoria with Heatmap’s own Charlie Clynes.
This week’s conversation is special: I chatted with Charlie Clynes, Heatmap Pro®’s very own in-house researcher. Charlie just released a herculean project tracking all of the nation’s county-level moratoria and restrictive ordinances attacking renewable energy. The conclusion? Essentially a fifth of the country is now either closed off to solar and wind entirely or much harder to build. I decided to chat with him about the work so you could hear about why it’s an important report you should most definitely read.
The following chat was lightly edited for clarity. Let’s dive in.
Tell me about the project you embarked on here.
Heatmap’s research team set out last June to call every county in the United States that had zoning authority, and we asked them if they’ve passed ordinances to restrict renewable energy, or if they have renewable energy projects in their communities that have been opposed. There’s specific criteria we’ve used to determine if an ordinance is restrictive, but by and large, it’s pretty easy to tell once a county sends you an ordinance if it is going to restrict development or not.
The vast majority of counties responded, and this has been a process that’s allowed us to gather an extraordinary amount of data about whether counties have been restricting wind, solar and other renewables. The topline conclusion is that restrictions are much worse than previously accounted for. I mean, 605 counties now have some type of restriction on renewable energy — setbacks that make it really hard to build wind or solar, moratoriums that outright ban wind and solar. Then there’s 182 municipality laws where counties don’t have zoning jurisdiction.
We’re seeing this pretty much everywhere throughout the country. No place is safe except for states who put in laws preventing jurisdictions from passing restrictions — and even then, renewable energy companies are facing uphill battles in getting to a point in the process where the state will step in and overrule a county restriction. It’s bad.
Getting into the nitty-gritty, what has changed in the past few years? We’ve known these numbers were increasing, but what do you think accounts for the status we’re in now?
One is we’re seeing a high number of renewables coming into communities. But I think attitudes started changing too, especially in places that have been fairly saturated with renewable energy like Virginia, where solar’s been a presence for more than a decade now. There have been enough projects where people have bad experiences that color their opinion of the industry as a whole.
There’s also a few narratives that have taken shape. One is this idea solar is eating up prime farmland, or that it’ll erode the rural character of that area. Another big one is the environment, especially with wind on bird deaths, even though the number of birds killed by wind sounds big until you compare it to other sources.
There are so many developers and so many projects in so many places of the world that there are examples where either something goes wrong with a project or a developer doesn’t follow best practices. I think those have a lot more staying power in the public perception of renewable energy than the many successful projects that go without a hiccup and don’t bother people.
Are people saying no outright to renewable energy? Or is this saying yes with some form of reasonable restrictions?
It depends on where you look and how much solar there is in a community.
One thing I’ve seen in Virginia, for example, is counties setting caps on the total acreage solar can occupy, and those will be only 20 acres above the solar already built, so it’s effectively blocking solar. In places that are more sparsely populated, you tend to see restrictive setbacks that have the effect of outright banning wind — mile-long setbacks are often insurmountable for developers. Or there’ll be regulations to constrict the scale of a project quite a bit but don’t ban the technologies outright.
What in your research gives you hope?
States that have administrations determined to build out renewables have started to override these local restrictions: Michigan, Illinois, Washington, California, a few others. This is almost certainly going to have an impact.
I think the other thing is there are places in red states that have had very good experiences with renewable energy by and large. Texas, despite having the most wind generation in the nation, has not seen nearly as much opposition to wind, solar, and battery storage. It’s owing to the fact people in Texas generally are inclined to support energy projects in general and have seen wind and solar bring money into these small communities that otherwise wouldn’t get a lot of attention.