After selling our Volkswagen ID.Buzz a few months back, we have another bite of the apple.
Most weeks, we get new cars, SUVs and trucks into our office that just sort of…pass us by. You know what I mean? It’s not so common to find a truly awful car these days, but a lot of them have homogenized to the point of just being “eh”. They’re fine, they’ll do the job, and the world keeps on turning. If you want what I consider to be a solid example of that sentiment in action, I give you a convenient comparison in the Volkswagen ID.4 and the ID.Buzz.
Now, under the skin, the two have a lot in common. They’re both electric, they both ride on VW’s MEB platform, they have single- and dual-motor options and both have a fairly similar corporate face. If you boil it down to practical terms, you’d approach shopping the two as the Buzz effectively just being a bigger, more practical, three-row ID.4. And yet it’s not, and I had an opportunity to rediscover that after another week behind the wheel as we make our way through fall — a perfect time to roam around in my modern-day Microbus and take in the scenery.
The new Volkswagen ID.Buzz, as you can figure out just from the styling, banks on nostalgia to make its mark on American streets. While the ID.4 is a ruthlessly sensible and solidly capable commuter machine, you’re meant to turn and look at the Buzz. Even better, the virtue of being a van means you get all the space you’d reasonably need in a manageable footprint, and packs a comfortable ride to boot, so it’s not like you have to even give up practicality to make a statement.
And statement the ID.Buzz does make. Even more than a year after (finally) making its U.S. launch, people far and wide still do a double take, smile and give a thumbs up when you drive past. From the happy-go-lucky face to the upright proportions and huge glass area, the ID.Buzz nails the sense of freedom and that still makes the old-school Microbus a smile-inducing sight when you see one. It has personality, and it’s rare that a relatively mainstream car (let alone an EV) can claim that.
Still, we do live in the real world…and in the real world, the Volkswagen ID.Buzz starts at an eye-watering $61,545. Spec up an all-wheel drive Pro S Plus like we have here, and that figure goes up to $70,540. Is the nostalgia hit and making other people happy worth that sort of investment? After a few days behind the wheel, you can almost make a case to take the plunge.
Almost.
There’s a lot of good going on with the new Volkswagen ID.Buzz
From nose to tail, there’s much to commend the 195.4-inch ID.Buzz. Overall, it’s just about 8 inches shorter than a Toyota Sienna, but gains that back in overall height (at 76.2 inches). Headroom is abundant, therefore, and there’s still plenty of legroom on all three rows. The Pro S Plus and lower trims lack a panoramic fixed glass roof, as you’ll only get that with the fully loaded 1st Edition with 4Motion for (*checks notes*) $71,545. Even so, the cabin feels appropriately spacious without it, thanks to the abundance of windows all around.
While folks overseas can buy the ID.Buzz as a straight-up cargo van, the passenger version we get still brings the sort of space you’d expect from a three-row family hauler. There’s 18.6 cubic feet behind the third row that you can compartmentalize with a shelve and VW-branded trunk organizer. Fold the third row down and that space expands to 48.9 cubic feet (though you can remove the rearmost seats entirely, in which case you’d have 75.5 cubic feet). Take both the second and third rows out of commission for passengers, and you’ll get a whopping 145.5 cubic feet of cargo volume.
The level of technology on offer is also a major plus point for the ID.Buzz. Unlike some EVs, it hasn’t gone stark raving mad with screens, for a start. You get a modest 5.3-inch display behind the steering wheel with all your important driving data including range (more on that later), and a 12.9-inch central touchscreen. VW’s latest infotainment system, to its credit, is more intuitive and responsive than what we experienced in the original ID.4, even if it still isn’t a world-beater. The haptic sliders are still there for your climate and volume controls, but at least here they actually work decently well. Speaking of climate controls, the second-row passengers also get their own overhead sliders to adjust their temperature.
Another plus point for the ID.Buzz is the powertrain. Standard rear-wheel drive versions get a single 282-horsepower unit, while dual-motor 4Motion variants get a bump to 335 horsepower. You obviously also get the benefit of all-wheel drive traction, though you have to step up to the Pro S Plus trim to get 4Motion at all. Acceleration is nice and zippy (but not overwhelming), the ride is smooth and compliant, and the regenerative braking is nice and predictable. You can strengthen the experience to get closer to one-pedal driving by twisting the gear selector over to the “B” setting, but you will have to do that each time you drive. It won’t carry over between power cycles, which is a bit annoying.
Driving the ID.Buzz is all fun and games, until the range anxiety hits…
So, the styling is good, the practicality is good, the tech is pretty good and the driving experience, despite having an EV’s characteristically numb steering, gets a general thumbs up too. You’re bombing around in your Buzz, taking in the scenery and thumbs up from bystanders and everything feels right with the world…and then you look down.
And when you look down, you suddenly realize that you have 28% battery charge remaining and a paltry 67 miles before your Buzzy butt is siding on the side of the road. You’re then scrambling to find a charging station because the new Volkswagen ID.Buzz, in the best-case scenario, manages 234 miles on a single charge of its 13-module, 91-kWh battery pack. The 4Motion model takes a slight range hit for 231 miles, but again, that’s assuming you granny drive it everywhere you go. Get a cheeky jump from the lights or cruise at highway speeds for too long, and that range figure precipitously drops off until the aforementioned anxiety sets in.
Want proof? Just check out our initial misadventure to see how our first ID.Buzz journey panned out.
I thought we were past this?
Times used to be that you bought an electric vehicle expecting it wouldn’t cover the sort of ground you’d expect if you took it on a family road trip. In several cases, though, that’s no longer the case: SUVs like the Rivian R1S, Tesla Model X and Lucid Gravity manage well over 300 or even 400 miles. Step down your budget a bit (even to within the $60-$80K region we’re talking about here), and you can still expect a comfortable driving range and decent fast-charging capability, should you need it.
At 200 kW, the new Volkswagen ID.Buzz isn’t the slowest-charging EV around, but it’s certainly not the quickest either. VW says you can expect to charge up from 10 to 80% in about 26 minutes, but there are still a couple issues with that. One is that you’ll spend a pretty penny DC fast-charging all the time. My session cost a cool $26.43 to regain about 150 miles.
The second is that, thanks to the relatively short range, you will be charging up a lot. And if you’re spending this much on a new EV, then factoring in all the time and money you’re going to spend charging it up, this proposition is a much tougher one to recommend. Especially when, even in a time when EV sales are effectively falling off a cliff, there’s still plenty of competition out there.
So, the verdict hasn’t changed…but the ID.Buzz is still fun (if you can get a good deal)
At face value, then, I still have a hard time recommending the Volkswagen ID.Buzz due to the price and shorter driving range. Other minor annoyances may factor into your shopping choice as well, such as a surprising lack of cupholders for rear seat passengers (though you can move the front console to the second-row to partially fix that issue) or the fact that only the second-row passengers get a small sliding window for ventilation.
That said, there are also reasons why you don’t want to write the Buzz off right now. Despite only being on sale for a short time, dealers are extremely motivated to get these vehicles off their lots. And by that, I mean you can pretty easily find them available for several thousand dollars under MSRP. As time goes on, those same dealers will likely drop them further, as any car sitting on the lot for months on end can look bad for business.
And, of course, the new Volkswagen ID.Buzz is generally a fun car to live with (I’d still take it over the ID.4, on personality alone). Unlike some EVs, this doesn’t smack me as just an appliance. It’s something you and yours can enjoy for some years yet, if you can get it at a palatable price. And please, for the love of all that’s still good in the world, get it in an interesting color! VW sent us this single-tone Silver Buzz, which is honestly kind of a bummer as you can get awesome two-tone options in yellow, blue, red, orange and even a mint green (called ‘Mahi Green’). Life’s too short, and it’s especially to short to make this kind of investment in a black or silver minivan. Don’t be boring.
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