Tested: Volkswagen ID.Buzz – One of the year’s most exciting electric cars
This article was first published in Finansavisen Motor.
CAR TEST: If you’re wondering if there are still new cars that can bring smiles in traffic, the answer is «Yes, soon».
A day’s test drive in and around Copenhagen with the brand new Volkswagen ID.Buzz dressed in two-tone Candy White and Lime Yellow metallic is proof enough.
Never have we attracted more attention in the local environment in our 15 years at the tester than with this car. Never got more thumbs up, been photographed by passers-by and asked to sit in the car. All with a smile at the corners of their mouths.
Nostalgic vibe: Such a front would hardly have been designed without a previous icon to play with, with two-tone paint and a front that comes smiling at you. Photo: VW
Arousing attention
The car that has a front that smiles is greeted with a smile by the surroundings. Not just by those who are old enough to have experienced the early years of the microbus and get a flashback to their own youth.
If you are among those who are waiting to receive one of the first copies at the end of the year, you should just prepare yourself for the fact that this is a car that does not just slip imperceptibly into the gray traffic picture. Especially not if you have chosen one of the two-tone combinations that really bring the association back to the grandeur of yesteryear.
![Practicality: ID.Buzz will probably return to the MPVs so popular on the Norwegian market. Photo: VW](https://imaginary.abcmedia.no/resize?force=false&width=980&height=543&interlace=true&url=https%3A%2F%2Fabcnyheter.drpublish.aptoma.no%2Fout%2Fimages%2Farticle%2F%2F2022%2F09%2F20%2F195872488%2F1%2Foriginal%2F70518975.jpg)
Practicality: ID.Buzz will probably return to the MPVs so popular on the Norwegian market. Photo: VW
Iconic
“An icon reloaded” is the motto for the international launch, and Volkswagen plays on all the nostalgic strengths in combination with the motorization of the future.
The ID.Buzz is finally a car that would not have been given this design, had it not been for the history and the success the original has had. The design inspiration lies deep in every part of the exterior, but disguised in a packaging that is not too retro.
All exterior and interior details have been given a modern design around the almost square box van, which provides a lot of interior space compared to the space it takes up on the road.
![Funky box: It is not for nothing that many designers are most satisfied when they succeed with a van design. It's not all that complicated. Photo: Ivar Engerud / Finansavisen](https://imaginary.abcmedia.no/resize?force=false&width=980&height=598&interlace=true&url=https%3A%2F%2Fabcnyheter.drpublish.aptoma.no%2Fout%2Fimages%2Farticle%2F%2F2022%2F09%2F20%2F195872489%2F1%2Foriginal%2F70519112.jpg)
Funky box: It is not for nothing that many designers are most satisfied when they succeed with a van design. It’s not all that complicated. Photo: Ivar Engerud / Finansavisen
Good space
Well, it’s not a small car as it stretches 4.71 meters in length and extends a few millimeters below the two meter mark with the mirrors inside. With the mirrors out, as they are 99.99 percent of the time, the surroundings should have room for a 2.21 meter wide craft.
Slightly depending on specifications, the height is from 1.93 to 1.95 meters and inviting luggage space varies from 1.121 to 2.205 liters, depending on what you need to have all five seats up or not. The van version has a whopping 3.9 cubic meters of cargo space.
The US launch is still just over a year ahead, and with it comes a longer wheelbase, seven seats and four-wheel drive. Until then, it’s all about five seats, stern engine and rear-wheel drive, but it’s far from a bad combination.
![Van: Not for rent. Few of the orders are for ID.Buzz Cargo, which goes straight into utility transport in Norway. Photo: VW](https://imaginary.abcmedia.no/resize?force=false&width=980&height=527&interlace=true&url=https%3A%2F%2Fabcnyheter.drpublish.aptoma.no%2Fout%2Fimages%2Farticle%2F%2F2022%2F09%2F20%2F195872490%2F1%2Foriginal%2F70519348.jpg)
Van: Not for rent. Few of the orders are for ID.Buzz Cargo, which goes straight into utility transport in Norway. Photo: VW
Good memories
I have to admit that I am so grown up that I have driven Transporters from the 1960s and 1970s already after the driver’s license was secured in 1978.
If you haven’t driven a classic Transporter, you definitely haven’t missed anything. Made for an upright driving position with an almost horizontal steering wheel and total lack of crashworthiness, you’ll need it easily for a long time.
With the kneecaps almost in contact with the inside of the front plate, deformation zones were a foreign word. And with the front wheels behind the steering wheel, right under the premise and stern engine, the original also offered some “relatively interesting” driving characteristics in special situations.
![Airy: You have a good overview when you have a place in the captain's seat in an ID. Buzz, both over the interior and the surroundings. Photo: VW](https://imaginary.abcmedia.no/resize?force=false&width=980&height=653&interlace=true&url=https%3A%2F%2Fabcnyheter.drpublish.aptoma.no%2Fout%2Fimages%2Farticle%2F%2F2022%2F09%2F20%2F195872491%2F1%2Foriginal%2F70519462.jpg)
Airy: You have a good overview when you have a place in the captain’s seat in an ID. Buzz, both over the interior and the surroundings. Photo: VW
Total makeover
Fortunately, it’s not much nostalgia on that part of the newcomer. The seating position is of course relatively upright, with a very good and airy feeling and overview of both the dashboard and the road ahead where we sit in comfortable captain’s chairs.
Both the steering wheel and seating position, as well as the rest of the interior, we finally saw for the Volkswagen anno 2022. Those who have driven any of the ID models that are already on the market will recognize themselves in everything from technology and support systems.
Here they are linked to visual details that bring some of the nostalgic elements from earlier times, without it being intrusive in any way. The interior is stylish with practical details and discrete «ambient lighting» with countless options for the color of the light.
Seat configuration and placement is flexible as the interior can be adapted to the number of passengers and needs for equipment and luggage brought along. It is a car that can easily fulfill the role of accommodation for those who are camping enthusiasts, but are not in the motorhome class, as the original did for many a family in Norway as well.
![Practicality: The seat configuration can be changed, and with all five in use you still have space for over 1.1 cubic meters with the stowage back. Photo: VW](https://imaginary.abcmedia.no/resize?force=false&width=980&height=653&interlace=true&url=https%3A%2F%2Fabcnyheter.drpublish.aptoma.no%2Fout%2Fimages%2Farticle%2F%2F2022%2F09%2F20%2F195872492%2F1%2Foriginal%2F70519743.jpg)
Practicality: The seat configuration can be changed, and with all five in use you still have space for over 1.1 cubic meters with the stowage back. Photo: VW
Comfortable MPV
The front and rear girders are pulled as far apart as possible. The wheelbase is a hair’s breadth under three metres, so that both space, comfort and driving characteristics win.
A feature that owners will undoubtedly appreciate, how engineers and designers have managed to limit the turning radius, so that it only needs 11.1 meters for a turn. That it is practical in one of which Copenhagen we got more proof of.
Well, it’s not even an ID.Buzz any racing car, but a people carrier, so the performance is not among the roughest in the electric car market. But for any everyday purpose, a 204 horsepower and a torque of 310 newton meters enough to give a feeling of driving is effortless and comfortable.
The fact that it takes 10 seconds to reach 100 km/h hardly bothers the passengers in the car. Nor that the top speed is 145 km/h.
![The details count II: Lantern design has undergone a revolution in the past decade, and ID.Buzz has evolved further. Photo: IVAR ENGERUD / FINANSAVISEN](https://imaginary.abcmedia.no/resize?force=false&width=980&height=653&interlace=true&url=https%3A%2F%2Fabcnyheter.drpublish.aptoma.no%2Fout%2Fimages%2Farticle%2F%2F2022%2F09%2F20%2F195872494%2F1%2Foriginal%2F70520146.jpg)
The details count II: Lantern design has undergone a revolution in the past decade, and ID.Buzz has evolved further. Photo: IVAR ENGERUD / FINANSAVISEN
Fast charging
The battery pack is located low, with the associated low point in the MEB platform. Something that provides very precise and fine driving characteristics under all normal conditions. It is easy to settle in behind the wheel and drive the approximately 40 miles of range the battery pack of net 77 kWh offers without wearing out.
When you have to stop to charge on a long journey, it is all the more positive that it can be charged with 170 kW. The charging time at maximum transfer capacity from 5 percent to 80 percent is half an hour – a little good coffee stop.
With Volkswagen’s large inventory of off-the-shelf technology at all levels, ID.Buzz benefits from recent years of development and offers wireless software upgrade, OTA, Over the Air.
![Not for the shy: Volkswagen has sold its logo proudly in size XXL in the middle of the front. Photo: Ivar Engerud / Finansavisen](https://imaginary.abcmedia.no/resize?force=false&width=980&height=653&interlace=true&url=https%3A%2F%2Fabcnyheter.drpublish.aptoma.no%2Fout%2Fimages%2Farticle%2F%2F2022%2F09%2F20%2F195872493%2F1%2Foriginal%2F70519959.jpg)
Not for the shy: Volkswagen has sold its logo proudly in size XXL in the middle of the front. Photo: Ivar Engerud / Finansavisen
Charming
A few hours on the flats around – and in the center of – Copenhagen in no way provide a basis for any lowering of the judgment on the ID aircraft carrier. But it is a particularly positive meeting with a model that elegantly connects past and future. You get it from just under half a million before you start splurging it up a bit.
It is a model that has apparently taken a very long time to arrive at, not least since Volkswagen has piqued curiosity about a new microbus so many times in this millennium.
But once it has landed, in 2022, it will bring with it a coolness that the competitors will have to struggle with. Of course it has to come, but there is something about the car that should stand in the way if you really want to, can afford it and the car is right for you.