I think it’s fair to say that a re-born Volkswagen Microbus is one of those cars that I have personally been hoping to see happen for a very long time. And, I’m hardly alone there: even Volkswagen itself has been dreaming of a re-born Bus since 2001, when their first of five resurrected and modernized Microbus concepts hit the scene, and it’s been continuing on slowly, so very slowly from there. Finally, over 20 years later, we finally have a re-born Microbus, and I think this is the third or maybe fourth event I’ve been on for the ID.Buzz? I’ve rarely seen a car have such a long and public gestation. But we’re finally here, and this is an important vehicle, and I have many, many thoughts about it. Including thoughts about why I know the Bus I dreamed of could never have happened, at least not like this.
The original Microbus is one of those iconic cars that was born from entirely practical considerations, and all of the character and personality and soul that it developed over the years was an unintended side effect of just being such a useful, unpretentious machine. It was a box on wheels, originally designed from a quick sketch intended to solve a specific problem, how to make a cheap and useful commercial vehicle, and from there it was gradually realized that it was also great at hauling people, too, and this box on wheels was really a sort of mobile room, and as such, just about anything – and I do mean anything– could and definitely was done inside the metal walls of a Microbus.
With all that in mind, let’s take a moment to remember that all of this – from the commercial vehicle that got Europe back on its feet after WWII to hippie-bus to family hauler to small camper to this new advanced EV ID.Buzz all starts here, with this crude sketch:
The original bus grew from that sketch and became the icon we all know by simply being out there in the world, doing things. It earned its personality slowly and laboriously over the decades. The ID.Buzz is different; the Buzz takes an already-formed personality and puts it on, like a suit.
It’s a nice suit, sure, but it’s still just a suit. The motivations and reasons that the Buzz exists are not the same reasons why the original Type 2 Bus came into existence in the first place. The Buzz is here to be VW’s new halo car, it’s here to remind the world of the intense and unmistakable personality and character that Volkswagen used to possess, after so many years of VW diluting that character with so many near-indistinguishable SUVs and crossovers. It’s a reminder to the world that VW can still be VW.
Why Being An EV Restricts A New Bus In Ways That Aren’t Just Distance
The original Bus is a concentrated bomb of emotion and nostalgia and character. There’s so much there to work with! This new iteration of the bus does manage to capture a lot of that in its styling, and, don’t get me wrong, it works, and people absolutely notice. People were turning heads and pointing and yelling things and asking questions everywhere these big loaves rolled past. They’re fun, and they make people around you smile, and that’s a very important trait in a car, I think.
This doesn’t change the fact that it isn’t the re-born Bus I want it to be, for a number of reasons, all of which hinge on one of the most crucial parts of what this new Bus is all about: it’s electric.
And by electric, I mean all electric, a battery electric vehicle, and on one hand, that’s great: it’s incredibly efficient, quiet, and fast, with great acceleration – things that nobody was ever really crowing about for the original air-cooled combustion-engined Bus. Well, they were decently efficient, I suppose, just, you know, loud and slow.
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Even though all of the four earliest reborn-Microbus concept cars that VW showed weren’t intended to be electric vehicles, the one that VW eventually brought to market really had to be. VW had no choice, really, because of a little very big something called Dieselgate. After that disaster, VW’s next big moves had to be ones that avoided the whole idea of emissions altogether. This isn’t just me speculating wildly; remember this ad from about five years ago when the ID.Buzz was first teased?
VW’s ads have always been great, and this one is no exception. It’s a powerful tale of remorse and redemption and rebirth, told through imagery and music and almost no actual words. And it only works if the vehicle in question is electric.
So, the re-born Bus had to be electric, had to be part of the ID family of cars built on VW’s MEB platform, and that also means had to have a big-ass battery pack so it could have some decent amount of range. That also means that it has to be at least somewhat expensive because a battery pack of that size is just not cheap.
You can’t build an EV with a 91 kWh battery pack on the cheap. And once you know that, it forces your hand. The idea that VW could have built a nice, affordable new Bus that fit the original Bus’ do-anything-for-anybody mandate just can’t happen when you have a platform this expensive to produce. So VW did the only thing they really could do in this situation: they kicked the Bus upmarket.
As a result, the ID.Buzz is a premium-feeling nostalgia machine, something that will initially appeal to wealthy boomers who have many fond and debauched memories of their youth spent in VW Microbuses, roadtripping and other kinds of tripping, back when they were young and taut and sexy and life was an idealistic rainbow blur of possibilities and righteous indignation and music and drugs and sex and no responsibilities.
Now they’re wealthy and comfortable (well, some of them) and those of them that haven’t been responsible for driving up the prices of original VW Microbuses to unattainable levels for all us poor schmucks can now get a taste of their old proto-vanlife with a brand-new Bus that doesn’t ask them to give up any comfort or convenience.
The ID.Buzz starts at $59,995. It’s not cheap. I wanted the ID.Buzz to be something that families who were cross-shopping Honda CR-Vs and Toyota RAV4s could consider as an alternative. A roomier, quirkier, more fun alternative. All the advantages of a minivan, but, thanks to the striking and novel looks, without the stigma of a minivan. VW used to market the Microbus like this in the ’60s and ’70s, when they were calling it a Station Wagon and pitting it against the CR-Vs and RAV4s of its day, which were mainstream station wagons.
This is what I was hoping for: something between $30 and $40,000 that was a bit more downmarket in its interior and materials. But, as an EV, there’s just no way to pull this off. So, VW had to lean in and make the ID.Buzz an upmarket car to justify the high price.
Granted, it’s very nice; very roomy and all of the materials feel great, and everything feels put together impeccably. There are little Easter Eggs hidden all over the place, embossed into the upholstery, or molded into the plastics.
It’s nice, it’s all really flapping nice, but what I would have preferred is an interior of rubbers and hard-wearing plastics that was more like what a Honda Element’s interior was like: adaptable and rugged.
But, again, it’s not that. It’s $20,000 more than that because batteries are expensive and VW, it seems, is in this business to make money, of all things. So this is what we have, and that’s just how it is.
So What’s It Like?
The ID.Buzz drives like most modern EVs do: quick, smooth, easy. The RWD version has one motor at the rear, as is Microbus tradition, and makes 282 horsepower and 413 pound-feet of torque, good enough to get the Buzz from s stop to 60 mph in (I think) 7.3 seconds, and if you add the extra motor up front for a total of 335 hp, then it seems it can do that in 6.6 seconds.
Compared to Microbuses past, this is pretty much lightspeed, and considering the Buzz weighs almost 6,000 pounds, it’s pretty incredible, considering. It’s not the fastest car out there, but it may just be the fastest electric minivan, definitely the fastest electric two-tone minivan out there.
Handling-wise it’s a tall box, but a tall box with the vast majority of its weight concentrated way down low, between the axles, and as a result it feels quite planted. VW’s driving route that was given to us was surprisingly twisty, so I got a chance to wring the Buzz out in contexts that, let’s be honest, it’s not really likely to find itself in. It’s not a canyon-carver, but it manages to do that better than anyone would think.
The combination of the tall shape and the low-set weight does sort of give it an odd feeling in corners, like you’re riding atop something, or perhaps on a bike holding a tall ficus plant in a heavy, dirt-filled pot.
I can’t complain about how it drives, really, because it drives just fine for the job it needs to do. Besides, I have other stuff I can complain fecklessly about, so stick around.
Space And Packaging And Missed Opportunities
VW is proud of the packaging of the ID.Buzz, and they should be, for the most part. It’s got the same footprint as their faintly absurd fastback SUV, the Atlas Cross Sport, but has vastly more room inside. And it should! It’s a big box!
It’s plenty roomy inside. If interior room for people and cargo is important to you, there really isn’t anything any better, especially when it comes to EVs that aren’t Amazon delivery vans or something.
The long-wheelbase ID.Buzz is a three-row vehicle, and both rows can fold down, which, along with a little platform thing that installs in the rear cargo area, can form a full-length flat floor, suitable for sleeping or laying a vast number of six-foot party subs atop one another, or carrying any number of other long things, like taxidermy’d giraffe heads (including neck).
The rearmost seats can be removed, and quite easily, too. And they slide back in surprisingly easily, too, which I wasn’t expecting. You just kind of align them to those tracks in the floor and they just sort of glide in, satisfyingly.
When the seats are out of the car, I suppose you could sit in them like lawn chairs, if you wanted. Also, I think they resemble those Super Battle Droids from the Star Wars prequels:
Less easy to remove and install is that little shelf thing at the back:
The shelf tilts up, so you can access stuff in those two little drawers VW provides, and to remove them you have to twist out those black-plastic-topped screws in the middle of the base of each of those U-shaped brackets, each of which takes about eleventy heptillion turns to remove.
Still, it does come out, and you can end up with a pretty cavernous space back there, but that space is sadly broken up by the non-removable center bench, and that’s frustrating.
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Why couldn’t that bench be removable also, letting the whole of the van become a blank canvas to be filled with whatever you’d want? Of course, if you could do that, you’d probably want something covering the floor other than carpet, because maybe you’d like to stick bicycles or even small motorcycles in there or any number of other possibly dirty gear and equipment?
Of course, this would move away from the more premium interior VW was saddled with providing, for the reasons I stated before and I find too depressing to repeat. But I think there is a real missed opportunity here, because I feel like the interior is where the Buzz lets us down.
The exterior design is great, and does what it needs to do; but the interior lacks any sort of real hook, any sort of compelling something that makes the Buzz unignorable.
What if the interior was designed in a modular way, where you could configure it any way you’d want, with modules for captain’s chairs or benches or folding beds or kitchen units or equipment racks or whatever? VW wouldn’t need to provide all these things, just a good format and set of specifications for the aftermarket to fill.
A more flexible interior for the bus would open up so many new markets, markets that will exist well past when the initial burst of sales from rich nostalgic Boomers finally slows down. Sure, the Chicken Tax prevents VW from selling the cargo version of the ID.Buzz at anything approaching a rational price, but an ID.Buzz with both rear rows removable and interior materials that can take a little abuse could have managed to fill that hole, all nice and legal-like.
The interior is good. There’s nothing really wrong with it, exactly. But it should be more flexible, the middle row should be removable, the flooring should be able to deal better with unclean and ungainly things, and it overall should be more flexible, more customizable, and just more novel than it is.
It Should Have Been A Hybrid
I get this is unfair of me to suggest, since VW doesn’t even really have a hybrid drivetrain in production, but it’s hard not to think that the Buzz would have been a lot better as a series-hybrid or an EV with a range extender. The range of the RWD one is said to be 234 miles by the EPA, and based on the driving I saw, up to 250 miles seemed possible. That’s a decent amount of range, sure, and it can charge at up to speeds of 200 kW, which can take the ID.Buzz’ battery from about 5% to 80% in just over a half hour. That’s not bad.
But, this is an ideal road trip machine. Or, it should be. It’s roomy and comfortable and seems like an ideal vehicle for casual camping and long trips, and the truth is pure EVs just aren’t great at that, at least not yet. Charging stations are more common than they once were, but they’re not as common as gas stations, and they still take a lot longer to use, because even if your car is capable of fast charging, that doesn’t mean that the charger you found is, too.
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A hybrid would solve these issues, allowing for the use of gas on road trips and more pure electric for daily driving duties. It seems like it would be ideal. It would also allow for a smaller battery pack which could hopefully translate to less cost, too.
Of course, you’d have to find a place to package the combustion engine (maybe in the space at the rear under that removable shelf? It seems like there should be room there?) I mean, it hardly matters, because the chances of VW coming out with a hybrid variant of the ID.Buzz is about as likely as VW coming out with a hybrid variant of their curry ketchup.
But I still think it’d have made for a better overall vehicle.
Some Lighting And Other Details That Differentiate The American ID.Buzz
I drove the short-wheelbase Euro-market ID.Buzz back in 2022, and while it’s pretty damn close to our long boy, there are some differences. The biggest of which, other than length, has to do with ventilation: there are HVAC controls and vents throughout the back of the van now, along with a pair of opening little square windows inset into each sliding door window.
The US-market cars also have to meet American lighting standards, which, on the good side, means actual side-marker lamps and reflectors:
The taillights are also different from the Euro version, but not really in a good way, because, for the usual inexplicable reasons, the amber rear indicators, which included this nice little bit of animation:
…here in the US, we get indicators that light up like this:
I’m not sure what that lower lens gets used for, if anything, in the US-spec light.
Here in America, we also have, as you’d expect, an American-wall-style power outlet in place of the Euro-style outlet, though its placement still baffles me:
It’s on the base of the front seat, in the passenger’s footwell. Why not put this in the rear? Or even more accessible for the middle rows? It feels like an ill-considered place for a wall outlet.
Let Me Conclude Already
I like the ID.Buzz. I really do. There’s just not that much like it on the market today, and I like that. It has the visual novelty of something like a Cybertruck, but with a completely different tone; less aggressive, less likely to bore you talking about crypto, more likely to bore you talking about concerts seen decades ago.
It looks fun, it’s practical, has good range, drives well, all that. But at the same time this isn’t just the new Sienna or Pacifica, this is the new Microbus and as such, I expect something more, something different.
What we got isn’t bad; it’s like if the old Microbus was this crazy artist you used to know, who did some really exciting and novel work back in the day. Now they’re a highly successful product designer and they make a ton of money, but they’ve definitely lost that special edge they used to have. They grew up.
You can’t blame them for taking the high-paying job and being comfortable and successful, just as I can’t blame VW for making a premium EV out of the Bus. They did what they needed to do.
But, that doesn’t mean I can’t wish things were a bit different. Because I do.
Yep, spot on article. Well done! The price I am not all that up in arms about since I would never buy new anyhow. The interior is the biggest whiff. 1) Gotta have an easily removeable second row – such an easy change! 2) gotta have a 3-wide third row, even if the middle one is a bit tight (I’ve spent way too much time looking, but cannot find, 3rd row hip room – it’s easily available information for every other van! anyone have this spec?) 3) gotta have available mats and cloth or vinyl. Anyhow, I’ll still be looking at the used market in a few years….
I’m severely disappointed with what it costs vs what you get.
Up here in the Land of Maple Syrup, these things START at $80,600. That’s RWD and one colour. The two-tone paint is a 4 digit upcharge, and the AWD version starts at over $86,000, the two-tone is an upcharge on that one as well.
Given the price of other EVs, I’m not sure who they expect to woo up here. Most folks shopping what will be nearly a 6-figure vehicle are not in the market for a van.
and on the base trim the only two-tone option is white/blue, you have to go to the next trim for more two-tone options. It’s very quickly an almost $90k vehicle.
I posted the same thing below; the EV-9 is “starting at” $63k for people shopping a 7-seater. Not to mention every VW dealer I’ve talked to (four!) in the GTA have basically shrugged at me when I inquired and pointed at the Atlas.
For someone who Really Wants A Van, the highest-trim competition is still like >$14K cheaper:
Toyota Sienna: $66,215
Honda Odyssey: $62,256
I agree – who will buy these, I have no idea. The whole thing is just odd, honestly. VW is building a huge battery factory in Ontario…maybe they’ll start making Buzzes in Chattanooga?
Such a spot on take, Torch. I DO like it but I’m also disappointed and know I’ll never own one.
When I met my wife 20+ years ago we wanted a VW camper for adventures. It became a choice between bay window and Vanagon as everything else was out of reach (and we didn’t like the Eurovan.) Ended up with an 86 Westy. I still love that thing but the rest of the family has kinda soured on it so it sits in the barn looking for a purpose.
I wish I could stuff the Sienna hybrid drivetrain in there somehow.
I can’t get over the bottom half of it – especially seen from the front – just looks like some vacuum cleaner 🙁
So I’ll just keep my own VW bus, a T4 with wonderful straight end-80’ies design (it’s from ’91) https://www.instagram.com/p/C8AQ013C9F4/?img_index=1
Did own the original (now expensive) one also a few years ago https://www.instagram.com/p/DAyx-VAoXYs/?img_index=1
The two paint paint is doing a lot of heavy lifting on the exterior design. I’ve seen monotone cargo versions in grey and black here in the UK and it’s nothing like as compelling.
VW making questionable styling choices, in this day and age? No. Couldn’t be.
But yeah, the paint really hides that the car isn’t stylistically that great. To me, it’s the worst out of all of the VW Bus prototypes (BUDD-e, Bulli, Microbus). Combine that with the rest of it being pretty milquetoast, and it certainly ain’t worth the price they are asking. This whole thing has been such a huge let down and largely reflects what VW has become over the past decade or so.
Something everyone must consider, that two-tone paint requires a 6k increase. The base model is currently only available in white, or black. So this thing really starts at 66k in the US.
Well, get a white or black one and just wrap the upper or lower half and save probably $3k
While this is in theory a good strategy, I couldn’t imagine buying a 60k+ van whose only feature is “specialness” and then paying to have it wrapped to make it special.
i miss your content…
if i sacrifice a couple of prized goats can we get an article?
There’s stuff coming soon I promise. I’ve been away, been ill and have family drama going on. I’ve got a couple of pieces written that just need another look but I’m not at home right now. Thank you for being patient.
I do appreciate the all black Buzz. I just looked it up on vw.com. The all black fits the menacing face. There was also the unusual combo of red base/silver top, I thought all the combos were going with the Candy White top.
I’ve not looked at the configurator but that red/silver sounds good.
It appears to be the trim Pro S Plus (dumb name, what is it a Pro at?) to get that color combo. Whatever happened to GL and GLS, normal trim level names?
Marketing.
It’s a nice, fun, expensive local people hauler. That’s really all it can do. As such, the primary market is well-off suburban families. We have lots of those in the US and many have chosen EVs so there is a market.
The real question is whether a 38 year old soccer mom who has no nostalgia for the original microbus will prefer this to an SUV. I hope the fun factor and the spacious interior attracts some buyers because I would much rather my road view to be blocked by this than an aggro utility vehicle.
This is the potential silver lining for me. If for whatever reason these work for some people, and I get to see more colorful vans around me instead of monster trucks, that would be a welcome sight. Though I doubt it, as I live in a cold climate where EVs are extremely unpopular.
Being 36 and around a lot of 38 year old soccer moms (at for example, soccer last Saturday) the van stigma just doesn’t seem to be as strong as it once was. There were a lot of vans. When I talk to peers about my van, the attitude towards them is largely positive, and I only get the “I WOULD NEVER” from select people who tend to be… a bit concerned about image. A lot of the older millennials I know that experienced the pains of 2008 are unfailingly practical (and cheap as hell), and seem to embrace the form factor of vans far more than the Boomer/GenX crowd. It’s always older people who make displeased faces at my van.
No excuse for it to have not been hybrid, or even gas version offered. I don’t feel bad for VW one bit, this is a miss from what this van is supposed to do: road trip. Their lackluster quality over the last 2 decades hasn’t helped them. If you’re just gonna follow the money, then I hope these tank and they learn their lesson that way.
Its genuinely wild to me that the majority of car companies just don’t care /listen to what people want: hybrids in all shapes and sizes. This isn’t just VW dropping the ball on this it’s toyota too. How the maverick is still dominating that space is hilarious and sad at the same time.
The whole ID.Buzz launch is pretty brutal for me, as I truly aspired to own one during it’s development. Now that it’s here, I’m utterly disappointed.
There’s just so much wrong with it. The price, obviously. The inability to effectively road trip in it due to range. The non-removable second row? That might be what pisses me off the most.
You got it right, as with most things that ape the past, it’s just a boring, modern EV wearing a nostalgia suit. And that sucks. And while I at least appreciate the two tone look, the quirkiness of the exterior in general, and the idea that anyone invested in a van at all, it just bums me out how cynical the sum of those parts are.
I continue to hope that an automaker someday tries to go after a market that would truly appreciate modern peoples cars, cars that would really make for good successors to the Beetle and Microbus. Because VW sure as hell isn’t going to be it.
What’s worse is that it’s not even a good nostalgia suit. Put a Chrysler badge on it and take away the two tone paint and nobody would give this a second look.
I’m actually a lot higher on the design than most. I think it looks pretty good, even though I’d agree with others that the two-tone paint is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Do I wish it was a bit friendlier and less techno-pissed? Yeah, but overall I think it’s pretty good.
I still think the proportions and the overall design would be pretty radical for another brand to put out. I only wish Toyota/Honda/Chrysler would embrace this sort of design for their next gen vans. While the Chrysler is nice looking (if long in the tooth at this point) the Toyota and the Honda look like crap.
“since VW doesn’t even really have a hybrid drivetrain in production”… Maybe not for sale in the US, but here in Europe almost all ICE VW’s are hybrids. It is a combination of a 1.4 or 1.5 TSI engine with light hybrid or plug-in hybrid technology.
They even have the hybrid Multivan (https://www.vwbedrijfswagens.nl/nl/modellen/multivan.html) which is a third van from VW, next to the Transporter and the idBuzz.
I haven’t seen a stronger fail by an automaker in some time. This whiff is emblematic of everything wrong with VW today. No one should buy this or Volkswagen stock.
Why didn’t they make the rear shelf become a table like a CRV did and then have little legs for the rear seats to click onto when you remove them? Instant picnic or tailgate win.
You can’t flip pancakes or eggs slowly, they will go flop. VW forgot about that. The massive enthusiasm over a new Microbus is now mostly gone. This will be the longest concept-to-sales flop in the history of car sales. It’s flopping before it’s arriving in showrooms.
I would have bought a Microbus anytime in the last 15+ years. I’m 48 now and the kids are off in college and we have no use for a van, no matter how stylish it is. More importantly, I’m the last generation (X) that saw the originals all over the place and remembers when VW was fun.
You, I and Torch are all around the same age which means we were in our 20s when VW first teased a retro bus. At that time the mid-to-late Boomers were in their prime kid-hauling years. I’m not sure what act of Germanic constipation prevented it from being built until now – the New Beetle was already a success at that point – but it feels like they went out of their way to miss the market, waiting almost a quarter-century and then going full-EV only on a car that screams to be taken on the sort of road trip where 230 miles of range’ll get real old real fast.
The EuroVan had more in common with the original bus than this thing. They should have just rebodied that 20 years ago like they did with the Beetle and called it a day. Too bad.
I had one for a few years. It was massive inside and yet normal sized outside and easy to drive. If it had been styled like a Microbus I’d still own it. Took the kids to national parks all summer through 22 states. Sold it and made money. Only vehicle I owned that did I sold for more then the purchase price.
I had a ’99 EuroVan with a VR6, totaled in a crash unfortunately. I really liked it, but it definitely had lots of late 90’s VW issues.
I like it as a brightly colored variant of a daily driver, but $70,000 worth of hallucinogens will take you and five other people a lot further than 234 miles.
SHROOOOOOOOMS! Far out, man…
My wife wants one of these. She thinks it’s cute and has loads of character. And she’s not a boomer. She does want more space, but doesn’t want a typical minivan or 3 row SUV. So yeah, there’s a niche market for people that want a cute electric van. ???? We also live on an island, so the range is fine for us.
You did a great job of explaining why the Buzz is what is izz. A hybrid or even an ICE to sell along side would have been nice. Good luck with that $60,000 starting price. I’m sure the dealers won’t add anything to the window sticker.
Thing sucks.
We had a T4 (Eurovan) camper for 15 years, and even though it wasn’t a “real” VW van, it connected you with people. The number of stories we were told, about past experiences with VW vans, was amazing.
This thing won’t do that. Fail.
“I get this is unfair of me to suggest, since VW doesn’t even really have a hybrid drivetrain in production”
In fact they do, the Multivan has been available in PHEV form since 2022.
No removable second row is another big miss by VW. Turning my Odyssey into a 2 person cargo van that can swallow a 4×8 sheet of plywood or other large items has been great. In fact I will be doing that this weekend to get some work done. Having the 2nd row stuck in place takes away a big part of van usefulness. Hard pass. Hopefully in 7 years when I start to thing about replacing my Odyssey there is a real EV van option.
In europe, having heated seats made them non-removable. The non-heated version is removable.
Which is ridiculous. If you can remove the doors from a jeep with power locks & windows, then they can figure out a connector for heated seats.
Can confirm. My dad is on his second Odessey, and he often leaves the middle and rear seats out to do anything from hauling materials to inflating a queen sized mattress and camping.
A cheap consumer Rivian van will be the Microbus of the 2020’s.
VW missed bad with this (angry eyes why….?)
I think the shorter European version with 2 rows would be more desirable and CHEAPER. But, either way, that face is one only a mother would love. For me, it’s sadly an ID.Buzzkill.
If viewed as a competitor with 3 row SUVs, it’s fine. In 3 years, the off lease, depreciated used prices may be decent for people who can’t afford them new and who might have more adventurous uses for them.
Look…. An EV isn’t perfect for long trips on back roads, but for uses on shorter trips and around town, it looks like a nice van to me.
I agree, but for most families with a van, isn’t the van THE road trip vehicle?
yes
Again, view it as an alternative to a fancy 3 row SUV. It’ll be fine for driving kids to school, in fact better than that Volvo or Subaru or VW SUV the other parents are driving in terms of interior space and fuel efficiency.
And like I said, off lease used models might be a good deal in a few years. There was just an article on this site about depreciation on used German luxury EVs
“It Should Have Been A Hybrid”
That would have been a temporary waste of time. That would have ensured it was off the shelf by 2030 and VW would then be working on an all-electric version.
They could have offered it as both.
That would have been a trade-off design and they would be stuck eventually designing an all EV version. The most successful EVs are designed as EVs from the beginning.
They’re likely to redesign it as part of normal product cycle anyway.
From the ground up?
We see the trade off in this plan with Toyota/Subaru. They are using a combination ICE/EV design for their EV and are getting their lunch served to them by companies that made an EV from the ground up SUV.
It’s not unlikely they will need new architecture as battery technology changes.
The original Chrysler vans had both rows removable. Not so easy to maneuver as they were benches, but you could do it. What they could have done here was make the carpet removable or they could use the opportunity to sell those all weather mats people love to cover the space. Then again, it’s still a $60k+ vehicle and if I’m spending that much, I’m not using it to haul filthy or potentially interior panel damaging stuff—particularly when it’s very much the vehicle’s appearance that’s a major selling point—which kind of defeats the point of a utility vehicle, which is also why they shouldn’t be so expensive as it not only limits the market, but the appeal even for those who can afford them.
Can Bishop do a realistic sketch of what an hybrid ID Buzz would look like (especially interior?) I imagine a rear engined one using Golf cradle and a hump in the rear loading area.
That should make it easier to pass all the frontal impact stuff without a major redesign?
They do make a commercial version with no 2nd row in Europe. I am not sure the take rate of this in North America, but I still remember the HHR commercial which was pretty cool.