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.
View this post on Instagram
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.
View this post on Instagram
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.
View this post on Instagram
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.
“You can’t blame
themDavid Tracy for taking the high-paying job and being comfortable and successful, just as I can’t blameVWDavid Tracy formakingbuyingaseveral premium EV[s]out ofinstead of having to take the aBused corpses of ancient Jeeps on fancy dates.TheyDavid Tracy did whattheyneeded to do.”I see the subtext here.
I’ve seen a lot of these tooling around Germany and like the Euro version. Smaller and seems less upscale.
I agree on the Hybrid system. I see so many Euro / German Spec VWs with a PHEV system tooling around, but thats not available in any US VW. I’d be totally game on ID.Buzz if it were a hybrid too, and cost the price of a new CRV Hybrid. It feels like a cool cool ride, but could be a miss.
Dang we’re so disappointed this is unaffordable for us and some of the choices they made. That middle bench should be removable!
We were really looking forward to this broadly: three row ev for carrying us, our kid, maybe a second kid, and grandparents mostly in town and rare road trips.
We just straight up can’t afford that at this price point. Maybe in 3 years when leases are up but we’ll probably get an ice minivan at this rate.
I believe the middle bench is removable but you need tools for that?
Damn I wish I could point you to where I read that. It’s been a blur (a buzz) of reviews the last few days.
I honestly like it the way it is, but I’m not sure who it’s really intended for. It’s kinda ideal for the electric Kool aid crowd, those who drive around the country stopping anywhere along the way that they feel like. Except it’s more like every 200 miles, when the bus feels. I would honestly consider it if we got the SWB versions here. I live in NYC,195″ and you miss out on the spots in between narrow houses. 185″ is slightly smaller than my old 4th gen Camry, so it’s a lot more maneuverable. I do wish they just went and made it a true microbus at like 175″ or something
A micro bus shouldn’t have road rage eyes.
I’ll never love this thing, and really the only problems i have with it are that absolutely it should have been a hybrid – and yes, the Volks shouldn’t have to pay considerably more than an average years salary for their sort of bad road trip machine. – and the mean mug. Un mean-mug your auto VW!!
>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.
This sums it up really nicely. It should be the people’s car, but it’s another rich (or foolish with money) person’s toy.
Honda if your listening – long wheel base element re-release.
Keep it under 40k with a small 3 cylinder hybrid and print as much money as you want.
These are so terrible. My 67 y/o mom wants one, but her enthusiasm cooled when she realized what the price was. She still occasionally talks about getting one in a few years. She bought a used Acura MDX to drive for a few years in the interim, hopefully she changes her mind by then. I was glad when she got the Acura. It’s fairly ugly but drives nice and should be quite a bit more reliable than her old POS Caddy SRX was.
Having lived with a legitimately short-ranged EV for a few years (smart 453), I actually think that the “but it won’t road-trip!” angle is a tad overblown. The advent of/transition to EV charging rather than gasoline-filling means that journeys currently require a bit more planning, that’s all. We’ve spent 100 years building up the infrastructure that means you can be reasonably assured to find gasoline pretty much everywhere; it’s unsurprising that charging isn’t at the same standard. For a really long trip, maybe just plan an overnight somewhere instead of powering through? Slow the world down a little bit, get back to visiting small towns because that’s as far as your horse goes in a day.
Or, you know, build trains.
I’ve had this “roadtripping in an EV” discussion with a lot of people. It depends on lifestyle. For retirees, taking more time to get to your destination may not matter much, especially if you have the budget for lodging. But for a family trying to cram in a vacation or a family visit into the allotted time off of work and school, turning 2 days of travel into 4 is a dealbreaker.
For us, one of our routine trips to visit family is 12 hours or so, including stops for gas and the bathroom. We always do that trip in one day. An EV, especially one with pretty crummy range like this one (curious how it does with a family and family crap inside of it) would make doing that trip in a single day impossible.
Again, for people who have the opportunity to take things slow and not mind the relaxed pace, by all means. But I’m going to assume that rarely works for most families (and this thing is a van after all).
Oh absolutely, my routine visit-family-trip is ~466mi/750km. Adding any extra travel time to a long weekend is a non-starter. When talking about *road trips* though I think of multi-day excursions rather than point-to-point travel. Enjoy the journey, and all that.
More broadly, what I’m trying to express is that we have a whole host of assumptions that are embedded with the ubiquitous availability of cheap gasoline. I’m dancing on the edge of the no-politics line here but—cheap gas depends on externalizing the costs of the CO2 emitted by extracting, refining and burning it. That era is coming to an end, and with it comes a re-calibration of our ways of getting around. Before the 1950s and the highway construction boom our transportation mix was different (Planes, Trains, and Automobiles :D) and it’s going to take time to change again.
In the meantime, the ID.BUZZ would work for someone whose visit-family trip is less than 400mi/720km. That’s not really me, or you, but I’m sure it’s plenty of folks. And as discussed over and over in articles and comments, everyone wants a vehicle for the edge case. How often do you *really* haul sheets of drywall? Drive 12 hours? Off-road? and so forth. Basically I’m trying to encourage us all to think a little more critically and outside-the-box about our choices.
It’s hard to convince someone to buy what they really need, especially with something like the ID.BUZZ. Because when someone spends 65-75k on a van, they’re going to expect it to do everything that they could possibly throw at it.
If people were trading those road trip capabilities for something else it’d be a lot different. But what we’re seeing here is more money, for less capability. And that’s a pretty darn tough sell. I only wish we as a society would consider alternatives to driving around insanely capable land yachts all over the place.
And yes, please and thank you to trains. If only.
I agree, having to spend an extra hour charging for a 500 mile day a couple times a year isn’t the end of the world, and that is with an EV that charges very slowly compared to newer ones. There are certainly spots, such as southern Utah and Wyoming, that are severely lacking in charging infrastructure that need improvement.
I think that we are needlessly harsh on EVs in particular for not being one-size-fits-all tools. No disrespect to Utah and Wyoming and Saskatchewan but like…yeah, this might not be the automobile for you in 2024! And that’s OK! We’ve only been half-assing the electric-charging rollout for, what, twelve years? (The first six Superchargers were unveiled in CA in 2012.) It’ll keep getting better, and for now just get what suits your individual lifestyle, or modify your lifestyle to suit the car you want. We *already do that*, we just don’t think about it.
I just watched the Jay Leno’s Garage Youtube Video on the Steam Train “Big Boy.” Man, traveling by train looks nice. Even if it’s not that luxurious these days, you just sit there and do whatever you want for some hours. No road rage. Not being exhausted from driving when you reach your destination.
So basically it is an id4 in a Edgar-suit?
To salt your wounds, in Yurp there exists a hybrid 7-seat VW called a Multivan. But it is not the old Multivan based on the Transporter anymore, because the Transporter is a mid size Transit in disguise now. And the almost smallest Transit (connect?) is a Caddy, because economies.
But the phev Multivan T7, which is not actually a T7, would not work in the US, because it is too small, like the swb Buzz. And I agree that the Buzz is stupid, not versatile enough (, also capacitive buttons). And the 1.4 tsi is not too powerful, and the battery is too small and it is also expensive.
But the aforementioned Caddy (also a Transit something), it is almost everything you asked for: work van-based, sparse if you like, rubber mats and hard plastics and everything, also available with low power engines. Even phev!
But… the wirtschaftswunder is well behind, DM is Euro and equals the dollar, the cost structure is similar in all industrial countries – the Caddy would probably not be especially cheap when imported. You have to remember that the for most Europeans in the 50’s-60’s, even a Beetle was a full size family car and you likely had to save years to afford it. Not a throw-away economy car, even if it was cheap in US. Times have changed, the whole concept of the American hippie bus does not exist anymore. So lwb Buzz it is.
I guess my question is, did they make it premium enough? Sure, it has a premium price tag, and niceish seats, but this doesn’t really look premium compared to actual premium vehicles. The dash, the buttons (lack there of), etc. doesn’t seem to reach premium levels… just the price. And the range… decidedly not premium.
I feel like they should have just admitted it was going to be at a premium price point, and built a premium van with premium range.
From other reviews I’ve read, the answer is no. Several reviews have called out VW’s choice of interior materials as being cheap and compared them to what you find in vehicles half the price as the Buzz. That 240 mile range for a vehicle this expensive is a joke.
The ID. Buzz is the biggest disappointment in automotive history.
It’s the automotive equivalent to Duke Nukem Forever!
Does it have a picture of a Tesla hidden it and tries to mock it? (Like the Master Chief armor in forever)
You’re forgetting the launch of the production version of the Chevy Volt. I don’t see that level of outrage about the Buzz.
Yeah, general outrage for this is lower. I just think a $60K EV is a piss poor attempt at reimagining the Micro Bus. It’s downright hilarious when typing it out. $60K?! I couldn’t believe it when they unveiled the US version. In 1974 Bus costs $4000 according to some random site.
https://www.ratwell.com/technical/MSRP.html
That’s $25K in 2024 dollars. As many have said, this should have been a hybrid. Too bad VW pushed their cheating diesels so hard and missed the hybrid market.
This would be a pretty perfect fit for me, and it’s what I really want. I’ve got 2 kids in car seats, intentions of more. I commute 30 miles to work, but only a few times a week, and my wife goes in every day but more like a 10 mile round trip. The only “road trips” we go on with any sort of regularity worth planning for are at most 100 miles away, so the range fits just fine. Making it an EV may come with compromises, but as a gasser or hybrid I doubt anyone would care about this. No one bought T4s when they were available here
I just can’t quite justify the price. The base price with a full $7500 rebate gets us close, but you miss out on the fun colors and glass roof, and it’s not rebate eligible anyway. Ironically, if we didn’t have those daycare bills we could easily afford it, but then I wouldn’t really need a van. If they figure out a way to cut the price some, I’d be interested, or I’ll just wait to buy used.
Also it’s wild to me that this is only a couple inches shorter than the (huge 7 passenger) Atlas. We have a vr6 model, and if they weren’t so intent on making it look like an SUV, you could easily trim several inches of length off the car. The VR just swims in the engine bay
FWIW the rebate ought to apply to leases so that can be an option if the numbers otherwise crunch the right way for you.
How easy it will be to get a lease on one of these while the early adopters are buying theirs is another matter entirely.
can’t get over something like this weighs 6000 lbs. That makes a Caddy Fleetwood seems svelte.
The only person I know personally that drives a minivan is my artist friend. He has a honda odyssey so he has something to haul his paintings around in. Most women I know won’t touch a minivan. This thing is really cool but it simply costs too much and should be a hybrid. Maybe they could have made a diesel one. LOL
My Mom is an Art Teacher who used to have an Odyssey w/ a personalized plate:
MYVANGOGH
My partner is one of those women who would never drive a minivan. We have 3 kids. She got a new car a few years ago, and I suggested a minivan. Nope. No way. She ended up with a Honda Pilot, which to me is actually just a crappy minivan: FWD, no ground clearance, 8 seats. But it looks vaguely like a SUV so she’s happy.
70K + ADM puts it out of reach for most of the people who want one.
Seems more like it has more in common with a base EuroVan than the Microbus.
Not seen one on the road yet. The “California” (camping) versions of their vans are everywhere now, even though the new ones cost the same as a hardly used Bentley…
Its rare when a new vehicle comes out that is so universally panned by both the public and press. There is a huge disconnect between the interior and exterior. Its like they got bored with the exterior and stuck in an interior from something else. It doesn’t look “premium” either. And in the end its not even a very good EV with the piss poor range. I am 47 years old. The first time I saw a concept for a new bus was way back probably in 1999 or something. Back when I still bought car mags. Insane.
Like just about everyone else, I feel like this is so near and yet so far from being a success.
If this was in the neighborhood of 40-45k, had better range, or (ideally) was a hybrid, I would be in line for one. I’ve been a classic VW obsessive my entire life. I have a 68 bug myself, and my dad has had and sold a couple busses in my lifetime. I LOVED the look of the last gen “new beetle”, but a fwd two-door just never fit my needs. I would, however LOVE to transport my dog, wife, and daughter in a modern bus. I just have zero interest in a 70k ev that has under 300 miles of range.
Bummer
This is one minivan I “might” be able to talk my wife into…but not with electric only range like that. Vans are the ideal road trip vehicles, and having no way to easily extend the range is truly a way to insure that this vehicle will mostly show up around cities, as advertising vehicles and some families that buy them.
That said, I look forward to seeing 10 years down the road and what people will do to modify them once they are at reasonable prices for that option.
I feel exactly the same way. My wife hates vans, but really enjoys the looks of classic VW buses, so this would probably be something I could sell her on… if only the price and specs of it didn’t suck so hard.
For now I’ll just stick with my plan of picking up a cleanish bay-window bus in a couple years as my next project now that my bug’s done.
Congrats on the Bug! Always a good choice for driving around…unless there are hills.
Thanks man! It was my dream resto project that I was able to spend a few years doing with my dad, so I enjoy every second of driving it! Mine is a good bit peppier than it would have been with the former stock 1300cc single port in it.
Shameless photo share of it from this past spring:
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/2491787.jpg
How does it steer? It looks like the front wheels are entirely encased in the fenders.
It actually steers no differently than it did when it was stock. I’m running a 2″ narrowed beam, so the steering radius with the smaller tires is no different. Zero contact with the fenders. As far as lowered bugs go, mine is actually on the higher end. I occasionally scrape on driveway and entrance curbs, but it’s nothing major.
Looks beautiful! I love the color blocked Bugs!
Thank you!! I wanted a so-cal/surf type of look when I painted it, so this color-scheme fit the bill well! We painted it ourselves in my dad’s shop though, so luckily you can’t see how terrible of a job we did from the photo haha
Beauty is in the eye of an 80 foot away beholder.
I’ve finally come to accept that because of the progression of technology and safety consciousness/statue this is the only thing new vehicles can ever hope to be: references to their predecessors.
If everyone, auto makers designing and consumers buying, keep the mindset that new vehicles can only be a hearkening of the old and not a rebirth of it, then the designs would be more successful and the buyers more satisfied.
That’s a big ask, though. I struggled, and continue to struggle, with that concept myself even though I know the truth of it.
The Italians seem to have pulled back a bit on the new 500e compared to the old 500, from a nostalgia standpoint. And obviously VW didn’t attempt to go all in on fun and quirky like the New Beetle. On one hand, fun and quirky means 100% unique parts that can’t be shared with other vehicles they are making – on the other hand it doesn’t seem like that’s helped them keep the price down.
How did you know?
Hope you at least had fun tooling around the SF bay area?
The article is spot on though. Lets see what happens when people start buying them and daily driving them. I’d venture to guess this will only be a few model years before it’s discontinued.
I really really am in love with this thing, but I just can’t afford it, nor could I realistically use it as my family car where I live. I mapped out a way we could make it work, buying a level 2 charger to leave at my parents house and another at my wife’s work, but at the end of the day, we still can’t afford it anyway.
I hate to be this guy, because I want to help the planet, and electric cars are neat!
But this thing would be in my driveway if it was $50K or under, and had a gas engine. And saying that really does make me sad.
Maybe, with some luck, they’ll be reasonably priced secondhand when theyre about 4 or 5 years old.
Honestly, with the EV depreciation they’ve written about here, I wonder if you’ll be able to get one for $35k in ~3 years.
Considering a 3 year old loaded Toyota Sienna is every bit of 45K, I would be so in.
I like the idea of it. But pricetag has me saying no.
Maybe if it were built to be cost competitive against a Tesla Y, it would make sense.
It should be Front wheels drive. The remade Bug was FWD and water cooled. it is a joke now, but was a darling for a hot minute there. but sadly nobody cross shopping the vehicles you mentioned are going to in any state above the Mason Dixon Line. at this price this would likely have to be a mixed use daily driver. If you cannot control it for a portion of the year on the road then it becomes a wistful interest piece until the slack sales kill it all together.