- Do you remember those cool hippie vans from the 1970s? Well, it's been reincarnated by Volkswagen, and this time, it's electric. Why don't we go see what all the buzz is about? What are the ID. Buzz's specs? Well, it shares quite a lot with the ID.4 crossover that we already have. That means an 82 kilowatt an hour lithium iron battery, for the version that we saw today, a single motor that drives to the rear wheels, and that's 150 kilowatts, or 201 horsepower. We also know that DC Fast Charge will take 30 minutes to go from 5 to 80%. However, we're gonna have to wait a little bit longer to find out the EPA range. So Volkswagen has been teasing the idea of bringing back its classic microbus for quite some time. The first concept they shows us was back in 2001, and in that time we've seen three others. The first three never made it to production, but the final version, the ID. Buzz concept, which we saw in 2017, has now morphed into a production car. Europe gets one in 2023, and it's coming to America in 2024. So what were my first impressions? Particularly, I'm impressed with the way that VW managed to stay faithful to the theme of the concept car. Quite often, you can lose a lot of those cool details in translation as you have to conform to, you know, the various regulations around the world for production cars. And this time, they've really kept a lot of those details in there. So what jumped out at me most was quite a thoughtful design in the interior with lots of storage. It's quite modular. You can take out the center cubby between the seats if you want to. It's got lots of storage bins in there. They've been really thoughtful with details, like the dividers for the cup holder also double as a bottle opener, and one doubles as an ice scraper. I like there's little sense of whimsy to the ID. Buzz as well. There were lots of little Easter eggs around there. So we found, I think, at least four or five little graphic outlines of the Buzz stamped into panels. So what do we think of the size of the ID. Buzz? Although the one that we saw today is the slightly shorter version that's not coming to America, it's still a pretty large vehicle. It's about 78 inches wide. The wheel base is 118 and a bit inches long. It's what you'd expect, really, from a minivan size. One of the advantages I think of an electric car platform obviously is because the motors are all quite small and below the bottom of the car, you do get much more space inside. So I think it has, even the version that we saw that's just two rows felt very roomy inside. And I think the three row version will be probably perfect for this market. So the entertainment system will be recognizable to anyone who's been in an ID.4. You can have up to a 12 inch screen, which I think this one probably is. They use capacitive controls here for the cooling and heating, and then the volume. I'm not in love with those. I'd love real buttons, but the industry's moving away from those because it's cheaper just to have a single unit as opposed to individual buttons. So what seems practical and impractical with the Buzz? As I've said, there's lots of storage cubbies and spaces all over the place, which I think is quite good. There are plenty of USB ports. I believe there's eight in total, which is a pretty good number, plus wireless charging. Although the middle seats aren't removable, VW will have a storage shelf that you can use, you can have as an accessory which allows you to have a completely flat bed. You can keep your stuff underneath it, and then if you wanted to sleep in the car, you know, if you wanted to go camping and put a mattress in, that would work. So that's very practical. Which I think would be quite a lot of fun. Impracticalities. Electric car designers love using massive wheels. The one that we saw was riding on 21s. Tires for 21 inch wheels can be quite expensive, so there's that. Other than that, the white led the steering wheel, which I'm guessing will be on first editions and not other ones. I have a feeling that will look quite dirty over time. So if it was me, I would probably want a black wheel. So one thing I've been surprised by is the interest in the Buzz from people who don't really care about cars. I know lots of people who I wouldn't think of car people who keep asking me, "Hey when's the Buzz coming out? When can I buy one of these?" Talking to VW about it, I kept calling it a minivan, and they would stop me and try and correct me and say, "Well, I mean, it can be a minivan, but it can be other things too." Couples who wanna go camping in the wild, it's an electric car, so you can keep the AC running if it's hot or the heater on if it's cold without really running out too much of the battery, 'cause those things don't use very much power. You know, if you have 82 kilowatt hours of electricity on board and you may be using 1.5 kilowatts an hour to keep the interior cool, that's a pretty useful thing to do. It'll be the first three row electric minivan on sale in this country, so really anyone who's looking for a minivan and wants to go electric, this is their only choice. I think it's gonna be a car with broad appeal. So on this door fastener here, there's a little smiley face that they put in. It's winking at you. And they say Germans don't have a sense of humor. So what was I most surprised about with the ID. Buzz? I think probably the design of the interior. Details that we've seen, for example, in the ID.4 Crossover. So it uses a very similar main instrument display and a similar entertainment screen, but I suppose the detail that really stood out was the open pole wood that they used for the dashboard, which kind of has a quite curvy shape, and I think it really lifts the interior. One big concern with the concept car is how it translates into production. Designers are free to do whatever they want with the concept. It doesn't have to conform to any regulations. Whereas if you want to sell a car in Europe and you want to sell a car in America, there are gigantic volumes of rules and regulations that your vehicle must meet in order to be sold there. But VW, I think, did a pretty good job of translating the car into production. The nose shape is slightly different to the one that we saw. It's bumped out a little bit more, but not really compared to any internal combustion engine minivan that you've seen. It really is still a one box shape. So they've managed to keep that quite faithful. I think that was quite a good job. Definitely a much flatter front, which you can do with an electric car because you don't have a motor to package. So, you know, you can have your crash impact structures, and in the case of an MEB car, which is Volkswagen's electric car platform, they also keep the climate control stuff, the various ancillaries and pumps, and there's a radiator 'cause you have to cool batteries. So that all fits in there. So unlike a Tesla, or a Rivian, or a F-150 Lightning, there isn't a front that you can store things in, but I don't think you're hurting for storage space. This is actually, you know, this is my one of my favorite features on modern cars. It doesn't really need to be there. It's a total luxury item, but just being able to close the trunk with the press of a button. I don't know why, that's just it's just the convenience feature on modern cars I like the most these days. So what about the cons? The biggest one probably is the fact that it won't be here in the states for another two years, and that means there's quite a lot that we still don't know. For example, what the power output of the all-wheel drive version that VW's gonna inevitably make, or if there'll be a larger battery, which I'm not sure, I think 82 kilowatt hours is probably the max for this platform. Obviously we don't know the price and we can't tell you its EPA range yet. So to summarize, what did we see today? Well, VW's done a really good job, I think, of translating a spectacular concept car that really wowed people into a production vehicle that I think keeps a lot of those details faithful whilst adding the kind of practicality that you would expect from a minivan like that. Obviously, one thing we didn't get to do was drive the car. Particularly, as when we were taking a look at it, I seem to have accidentally broken one of the doors that required a technician to come and undo whatever I had done. Sorry, VW. I hope I didn't break it. We'll get our first look at the production US version sometime next year, and we're waiting for the exact dates on those. And until then, we won't know things like pricing or its EPA mileage. Retro car design has been a thing for quite a while now, and I think VW successfully struck the right note between the details that people who fell in love with the type one and the type two will care about, but it still looks like a car designed in the 2020s. All right. I'm Jonathan Gitlin from Ars Technica, and you've been watching us have a look at the VW ID. Buzz. Thanks for watching. [electronic music]