I’m not sure I’ve ever been quite as frustrated with a new car. The hopes I had for Volkswagen bringing back the old Microbus were, let’s be honest, probably unrealistic. To me, even without the considerable burden of some bleary-eyed hippy culture nonsense nostalgia I was never a part of, the original VW Microbus meant something to me. It was a unblinkingly rational design that nevertheless somehow managed to wrap around to being a charming and quirky thing, full of character and usefulness and a lot of anti-establishment cheeriness. It was one of those vehicles that always made me smile, and every trip I’ve ever taken in one, as driver or passenger, has been one I look back on fondly. So, yeah, expecting that degree of fulfillment from any new car is probably unreasonable. And yet here we are. Volkswagen has resurrected the old Bus as the ID.Buzz, and there’s so much of it I do like, and yet it misses the mark in one such crucial way that it’s heartbreaking.
I think every time I write about the ID.Buzz I need to give a little rundown of all the other times I’ve written about it, because this car has had one of the longest and most protracted launches in the history of automotive letters. I first drove the ID.Buzz, in European short-wheelbase guise, back in 2022. Then, in 2023, I got to see the US-market long wheelbase version for the first time at another big event. And then finally, last October, I got to drive the long-wheelbase ID.Buzz in yet another “launch” event. VW always throws great events, so I’m not complaining, but it is a lot of build-up over two years for the release of a car.
Actually, I think you really can think of the build-up as having gone on for about 24 years, considering that is when VW first showed a concept for an all-new reborn Microbus, back in 2001:
And now, I was given an ID.Buzz to try for a week. I knew when I got one, there was really only one thing I had to do with it, since it was the one thing I didn’t get to do with it when I drove it all those other times: take it on an actual road trip. A road trip that involved multiple hours of highway driving, and without the highly competent VW support staff and route planners that make each press trip drive such a pleasant and worry-free affair. I needed to drive this thing at highway speeds in the messiness of reality, and see how it did.
The Road Trip Test
The reason this was the test that had to be undertaken is that I needed to confirm my suspicions that I’ve had in all my other tests of the Buzz: it’s almost a great vehicle, but the decision to make it a pure battery-electric vehicle has hobbled it, severely. I suspected this may be the case not because of the vehicle’s weaknesses, but because of its strengths. It’s packaged incredibly well, and as a result, this swoopy box on wheels has a vast amount of usable space inside, with each row – even the way-back third row – having great legroom and headroom and space overall.
There’s good luggage space, even with all rows up, and with the middle row folded and the rear seat removed, there’s cavernous amounts of space in there. What I’m getting at is that this thing is born for road trips. So I took it on one!
Not a massive one, but a decent one, from my home in the middle of North Carolina to the Spanish moss-covered charm of Savannah, Georgia. It’s a about a five-hour drive, or so. Or it should be, at least. It was even a pretty undemanding road trip, as far as these things go, with just two people and minimal luggage. The Buzz is, of course, capable of much more.
The Problem
But here’s the problem: it’s an amazing road trip vehicle hobbled with, frankly, a city car’s range.
The ratings for the RWD version – the one I had – are, officially, 234 miles. But that’s a combined cycle, and isn’t real-world road trip range. In my tests, in generally cold weather that required the heater to be used, with the battery capacity upped from the default 80% to 90%, and driving at speeds that ranged between 65 to 75 mph, because that’s what highway speeds are, if not a bit more, I found I really was only getting between 170 and 190 miles of range, often less, because the nav system is going to route you to chargers long before you get to the sphincter-pinholing range of like 10 remaining miles.
So, what this means, realistically, is that you’re stopping to charge every, oh, 160 miles or so? Sometimes 150? Two hours, give or take. That’s just not enough. And when you do stop to charge, it’s in no way as easy or quick as just filling up with gas.
This isn’t the fault of the ID.Buzz, of course, but the ID.Buzz is still hampered by the reality of the charging network in America. And in the context I’m talking about, home charging isn’t the panacea it’s made out to be by diehard EV enthusiasts. Sure, for day-to-day commuting, if you have a decent level 2 charger at home, the rich and profound shittiness of the charging infrastructure doesn’t matter so much.
But on a road trip? It’s a completely different story. Then the charging infrastructure matters a lot.
On a road trip, you need to find the fastest possible chargers, because the slow ones are slow, like you’re stuck there overnight slow. After I got back from the trip I tried to find a local charger by me, and ended up with a charger that was putting in 15 miles of range an hour, so, if I was coming in at like 20%, I’d need a good 8 or more hours to get a decently full charge.
View this post on Instagram
But there are fast chargers out there, including some baffling ones like these that were, for some reason, Mercedes-Benz branded:
I didn’t see any Benzes around, and otherwise it was a normal ChargePoint charger, but whatever. Most of the time I found myself charging for about a half hour or so behind a Walmart, almost always behind a stack of shipping containers. It’s not great, let’s be honest here. And it’s not cheap! The average amount I paid for charging the Buzz was $40 to $45 dollars, and I had to charge at least twice, there and back, with I believe at least one charge in between. It was more expensive than if I had bought gas for a combustion car.
Charging kinda sucks. There’s so many benefits to EVs, sure, but the charging experience sure isn’t one of them. I mean, sometimes you get to a charger, and the piece of shit has crashed, like your crappy work PC:
I suppose if I had the Tesla Supercharger adapter that’s supposed to be available for these soon, it could be a bit better, but it’s still nowhere near as easy and effortless as refilling with gasoline, and that’s the standard that needs to be met, fair or not.
Why I’m So Frustrated
So, what’s the flapjacking point of the ID.Buzz, then? The platform makes a ton of sense as a local delivery vehicle in its cargo form, no question. It’s fantastic at that. But the ID.Buzz, as it is, is both physically and spiritually meant to be a roadtrip machine. Something that turns energy into freedom! Freedom to go wherever, with whomever, and whatever crap you want to take with you!
And, don’t forget, this thing costs about $60,000, too. It’s not cheap!
And it’s great at it – in the one I had, the interior was one of the darker motifs, which I don’t like as much as the lighter ones with the brighter, more fun colors, but it’s roomy and comfortable as hell and the multi-zone climate control works fantastic and the audio system sounds incredible, and it’s the sort of space where you and up to seven of the people you love most can have a fantastic time, for hours at a time!
Except, of course, a good chunk of those hours will likely be spent immobile, behind a fucking Walmart.
The ID.Buzz has so many good things going for it! It drives great! I’m not kidding, the acceleration is terrific – unfathomable, if you’re thinking of the original VW Bus, like I was – and the highway driving is smooth, all that battery weight so low means the roadholding is great and the handling, for such a tall box, is surprisingly good. The brakes are terrific, which I can attest to because the front of the bus is not spattered with venison, which it would have been had the brakes been worse when that deer ran in front of me.
It looks great, too. Sure, that two-tone paint is doing a lot of heavy lifting, but who gives a shit? Let it lift! It’s working. It doesn’t look like everything else on the road, people turn and watch you go by and smile, and it’s still technically a minivan! A cool minivan! VW pulled off a hell of a feat by just achieving that!
It’s fast, roomy, useful, cool-looking, comfortable, it’s everything! Except you can’t fucking use it. Oh, sure, it’s totally fine for in-town driving and all that, but who cares? Again, this is a road trip machine. It’s almost perfect at that, except it can’t really actually do it.
Ugh, it makes me so frustrated. It’s like if scientists managed to clone Leonardo DaVinci, and he looks and sounds just like the real DaVinci and then they add, oh yeah, one thing though, he can’t actually paint or draw. But other than that, look, DaVinci!
There’s A Way To Fix This
What’s even more frustrating is the fact that this could be a solvable problem. If the ID.Buzz was a hybrid or had a range extender, it would change everything. A Buzz with a range extender – perhaps like what VW will be putting in the new Scout – would transform this into an absolutely fantastic machine.
And it could be possible! I mean, just look:
The battery pack could be reduced in size a bit, a combustion engine could be placed in the freed-up volume, maybe an inline engine turned flat or perhaps a flat horizontally-opposed engine, the fuel tank could go up front – why is this looking familar?
Oh, right.
Still, you get the idea. A range-extended ID.Buzz should be possible, especially now that VW has committed to making range-extended EVs with the Scout. A range-extended Buzz means that it could be a fantastic all-EV day-to-day car, and then when road trip time comes, it can drive and cruise with the gleeful abandon of anyone with a gasoline-fueled car.
But that’s not what we have. Thanks in part to the lingering stigmas of Dieselgate, the ID.Buzz is a wonderful vehicle hamstrung by situations and politics and events and circumstances beyond its control. To make it a range-extended EV/hybrid would solve all these issues. But, as it stands at the moment, the ID.Buzz leaves me feeling sad.
Sad about not just what could have been, but what almost is. VW needs to look critically at the Buzz and finish the job, the right way. They have all the pieces, they just need to put them together. They’re so close, and want this to work. I really do.
2023 VW ID.Buzz First Drive: Why This Electric Van Is So Important For Volkswagen And For EVs Overall
The Volkswagen ID.Buzz I Wanted Was Doomed From The Start
Let’s Look At Some Cars From Petaluma And A Crazy Coincidence: Cold Start
The Retro Volkswagen ID. Buzz Starts At $61,545 And Overall, That Ain’t Too Bad
i saw one of these in real life last week. my first thought was ‘it looks like a chinese knock-off of the a vw type 2’. it was tiny, not the hulking box on wheels we all know and ‘love’. i speak as a ex vw mechanic from the 60s.
I gotta say though, for that commuting case, with a home charger, electric is freaking great. Just plug it in at night and that’s it. It’s always ready for work, errands, picking someone up from the airport, whatever. No worrying about being low on gas or whether the station at the corner is a rip off this week. Maintenance (at least on mine) is once every two years. It’s maybe harder on tires than my last car- I’ve got almost 25k miles on these and they’re about ready for a change, but I only got about 30k out of my gas car’s last tires (both it and the EV are using “high performance” tires that I’d think are comparable).
I guess I’m saying I think this came out harsh on EV’s in general, rather than just the ID.Buzz on road trips. And yes, I fully agree with Jason that it fails there. I was quite sad when it came out that it didn’t have ~300 mile change and Hyundai-like fast charging, because I’d already been daydreaming of an ID.Buzz with a mini fridge and a fold out sun shade added for summer road trips.
I owned a 1966 and a 1971 microbus and from Torch’s description I think that VW has captured the spirit of the original quite well! It was always an objectively awful road trip machine. It was slow, it was cold or hot, and noisy. The joys were in the people and places, certainly not in the actual act of moving from place to place, unless you were a philosopher who regarded it as a test of your stoicism.
Also, you should have limited your speed to a maximum of 50mph! And, heat? There wasn’t much of that in a air cooled microbus. I’ll bet your range would have been a lot better if you’d of slowed down and used a wool blanket!
Only a Isetta would have been worse.
Both were excellent around town!
That’s why I love my 86 Vanagon Westfalia. It’s tank is only good for a little over 200 miles but a refill is around five minutes, or just enough time for the family to run inside the convenience store to pee and buy jerkey. Heck, I can make it halfway across the country in one day. I will happily give up a little bit of comfort and flat screens to have a cooler looking van that actually appreciates in value as it ages…
I am with you. Range should have been a red line – a non negotiable. Doesn’t vw know that owners would happily trade cargo space for extra range? Imagine a 500 mile range – ID buzz – my eyes light up just thinking about it!
Every feature problem with a car can be fixed with an appropriate price.
In this case, imo, the range isn’t the problem, $60,000 for the range is. Would the range be an issue if it were $50,000? $40,000? $30,000? At some point the cost justifies the range.
If you could get the same vehicle for half the cost, all of a sudden that vehicle with that range is a fantastic deal.
The Buzz would be fine if VW didn’t have to go make it so expensive and up-market. I am sure they had to do it to keep their profit margins at a certain level per unit,but it really compromises the end product. Here in Norway the ID cargo or whatever is everywhere as plumber/electrician vans. I feel they should have made some sort of a cheaper swb passenger version as an entry version,and then launch the lwb high-end version for profits.
I think this missed the mark on price and a bit on execution. In my mind this would have been an AWESOME successor to the spirit of the Honda Element. Start with a base vehicle at a base cost. Interior would be hard surfaces with some sort of rail/slider system. The customer could decide seating/camping, etc options to fill out the interior to their needs, via adding accessories that lock into the rails or whatever, or keep it base as a delivery type vehicle.
Afraid you yanks do not get it. Carbon free, means no range extenders. Engineering brains focussed on batteries and how to improve them — its been five years now since any significant improvements…
Right now seems an excellent opportunity for someone to develop and aftermarket bolt-on range extender for EV vans, SUVs and pickups. A gas powered generator with a voltage regulator specifically designed to provide a charge to EVs, even if it can only be used when parked, you’d still be able to charge basically anywhere. Obviously a full integrated one is better, but in this moment it might be really useful.
I have a 200-pound gas-powered generator with a 220v plug. Fits 7.5 gallons, generates 6500W. Put it on a trailer. No idea if that would work or how much farther one would get. Probably would need a conversion plug.
So… the new VW Bus traded acceleration for range? It’s kinda fitting that it has an Achilles heel just like the original. If you are never planning to get there quickly, the BU(S)ZZ is truly the answer.
I’m not sure that they traded range for acceleration, so much as they traded range for cost and weight. The Buzz weighs 6,200 pounds, 1,200 of which are just the batteries (source).