He needed the car to tide him over to a work based EV scheme.
A year later the dealer said he'd be lucky to get £8kfor private sale and that the dealership didn't want the car as had 5 on forecourt already.
He's kept the car and loved it, but 2nd hand EV prices here can be great (or bad if you are a seller) - I saw a 10year old Nissan Note EV for £1K the other day - if I already had a charger I would have snapped it up, even if the range was less than 50 miles now.
It wasn't (just?) a compliance car. It was a testbed for EV development by VW. The ID Models have had serious software problems, the ID.7 is the newest and best one. An even smaller car than the ID.3 was announced some weeks ago.
The ID.3 was never sold in the US (too "small"), so you wouldn't have seen it in CA.
The ID series is a ground-up electric platform with a lot more space inside. The e-Golf is just a Golf with a (poor) electric engine and battery bolted on.