The VW I.D. concept previews an all-electric autonomous future ... coming in 2025

[Suarez™]

According to Volkswagen, the all-electric I.D. concept rolling out at the 2016 Paris motor show portends many Big Things. Try on for size 250 to roughly 375 miles of range, to begin with, when the car arrives in production form in -- according to the automaker -- 2020.

And speaking of size, the I.D. packs midsize car-like space into a Golf-esque footprint thanks to the so-called "Open Space" spatial experience (we think that translates to "interior design"). Turns out there's a lot more room for humans and their belongings when you don't have to carve out a bunch of room for a fuel-burning engine.  We'll note that the I.D.'s 125-kW motor is a little smaller than the 150-kW model on the upcoming Chevrolet Bolt (which only gets a 238-mile range but will arrive much sooner), but this seems just fine for Euro city driving.

Then there's the fully autonomous drive mode, dubbed I.D. Pilot, which will be ready for mass-market adoption by 2025. When in use, the car's steering wheel retracts into the dashboard (just like on BMW's far-out concept car from earlier this year), and it'll be able to pick up packages for its owners while they're busy doing other futurey stuff.

Oh, and there will be a million of 'em (or other electric VWs riding on the I.D.'s Modular Electric Drive architecture) on the road by 2025, with or without drivers at their wheels.

All of this presents what we'd call an extended timetable, and to be fair, it's going to be impossible to actually hold VW to any of these dates; there's simply too much that could change, for better or for worse, between now and then. But as far as concepts go, the I.D. is a bit unusual in that it both makes a lot of huge predictions -- and then attaches some sort of timeframe to them.