Start with what the Volkswagen Taos is: a 5-door SUV with Petrol engine, built from 2018 to 2025, as electrification stopped being an experiment and the crossover took every market. What it meant takes a little longer. The shape is credited to Klaus Bischoff and Johannes Brandsch (Tharu).
The story
The Volkswagen Taos is a compact crossover SUV marketed by Volkswagen. It was first released in October 2018 as the Volkswagen Tharu in China, while the Taos was released in October 2020 as a restyled version of the Tharu for the North American, South American, and Russian markets. As of 2025, for the South American and Chinese markets the vehicle is positioned between the T-Cross and the Tiguan in Volkswagen's crossover SUV lineup.
It is not marketed in core European market. The Taos is named after Taos, New Mexico. The Tharu name is derived after the eponymous Tharu people, an ethnic group indigenous to Nepal and Northern India.
What is underneath
The engine is Petrol engine; other versions carried different engines, listed in the specification table below. Drive goes through a 5-speed manual / 6-speed manual / 6-speed automatic / 8-speed automatic / 7-speed DSG. The wheelbase is 105.9 in / 2680 mm (China) / 2638 mm (Russia). These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Its place in the line
In the Volkswagen line-up the Volkswagen Taos has a clear place: the factory was Puebla. The cars a buyer would have weighed it against include the Porsche Taycan, the Tesla Model 3, the Chevrolet Bolt. Nearby in the Volkswagen catalogue sit the Volkswagen Apollo and the Volkswagen Routan.
Owning one today
Buying one now means $19,300–$35,800 for a typical example, and running it — fuel and maintenance at its age — costs about $2,355–$5,268 a year. Insurance sits around $1,520–$2,340 a year. The figures are class-level estimates from the federal record, with the formula on the methodology page; the model-year pages carry complaints, recalls and repair costs year by year.