The battery-electric revival of the classic VW microbus is finally here. The Volkswagen ID.BUZZ concept debuted at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit in January 2017. Nearly eight years later, the production models are only just now reaching US customers and reviewers.
Volkswagen is betting that customers have a long memory, judging from their decision to echo the styling of the first-generation VW bus of 1949-1987. On American streets, the ID.BUZZ’s throwback styling is polarizing, but the percentages are solidly in favor of the design, with the love/hate ratio about 75/25 percent. Feelings were strong both ways, but if people love the neo-hippie bus’s design by 3:1, that’s a slam-dunk win for the VW styling department.
Alas, a driver’s next impression comes from the experience of tugging on the door handle. The ID.BUZZ, unlike many EVs, has physical door handles instead of electric door release buttons. That’s great, but when the handle is released, the door produces a tinny drumming sound in the disappointingly cheap-sounding manner of most Nissan vehicles.
I had the good fortune to get a sneak preview for Popular Science two years ago when I spent an afternoon in a five-seat, two-row European market ID.BUZZ, with its shorter wheelbase and slightly different specifications from this 2025 US-market ID.BUZZ. The fundamentals I noted at that time remain in place: My tested Cherry Red/Metro Silver three-row, seven-seat ID.BUZZ remained tall and bouncy, though as hoped, the US model’s longer wheelbase provides a slightly better ride than the Euro model.
Now, as then, stiff springs supporting a heavy battery pack combine with a tall vehicle to emphasize body motions. EVs are prone to aggravating motion sickness because of the abrupt acceleration and deceleration and the ID.BUZZ’s bounciness makes this even worse.
If the ID.BUZZ offered a high level of regeneration when the driver lifts off the accelerator for true golf cart-style one-pedal driving this problem would be even worse, so it is probably fine that its regeneration is relatively light.
Step on the accelerator–it is the one marked with the right arrow to look like a “play” button–and the ID.BUZZ can apply as much as 335 horsepower through all four wheels to accelerate to 60 mph in 6.0 seconds. The tested ID.BUZZ Pro S Plus was a 282-hp rear-drive, single-motor model whose acceleration was…fine.
Rear-seaters feeling bothered by motion sickness will struggle for relief by opening the window for fresh air, as the style-first VW bus lacks normal windows that slide down into the door. Instead, there’s an inset window segment that slides sideways in the manner of a pickup truck’s sliding rear window. This probably won’t provide the benefit a motion-sick passenger seeks.
Opening the windows is also a nuisance because of Volkswagen’s use of a terrible capacitive-touch switch to select whether the two physical window switches on the driver’s door operate the front-door windows or the rear-door windows. Reach for the switches and your hand is apt to brush against the capacitive-touch switch that changes from the windows you intend to operate, typically the front ones, to the ones you don’t mean to open. Then you press the switches and the windows don’t seem to open because the rear ones slide open instead.
This is one user interface frustration that plagues VW vehicles and it is overdue for fixing considering that we’ve been troubled by this switchgear since the ID.4 EV debuted. Another is the volume control. Most drivers prefer audio systems that use a conventional rotary volume knob. Volkswagen’s volume slider with its little finger-supporting tray at the base of the screen is just too annoying to use.
The ID.BUZZ carries a 91 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack that provides a 231-mile driving range for the dual-motor, all-wheel-drive model while the single-motor, rear-drive vehicle I tested is rated at a virtually identical 234 miles. While you’d expect the more powerful model to have a more noticeably short driving range due to higher energy consumption, those dual motors provide a correspondingly greater regeneration under deceleration to nearly equalize things.
Another constant between the US and Euro-spec is the height of the VW’s floor, as the company’s MEB electric platform stores the battery pack beneath the floor. The result is that the floor is a much higher step-in compared to minivans. At 22 inches, the ID.BUZZ’s floor is SUV height and more than four inches higher than the climb into a van.
VW says that ID.BUZZ buyers are mainly coming from SUVs, so this may not matter, with only 3 percent of buyers coming from other sliding-door minivans. Considering the vanity aspect of an ID.BUZZ purchase, it makes sense that sensible van drivers aren’t highly represented, despite the fact that the VW is a van.
As with SUVs, the ID.BUZZ’s high floor has a high rear cargo deck. There’s a raised platform in the rear cargo area to provide a surface that is level with the second- and third-row seats when they are folded. That makes it easier to slide large objects into the VW, but a minivan with seats that stow away in the floor has a much lower surface for loading bulky objects.
As with the seating, SUV drivers will probably not realize what they are missing, while minivan owners probably won’t be shopping for the ID.BUZZ because they aren’t interested in trading away their vehicles’ practical advantages for the VW’s head-turning styling.
No matter what style vehicle shoppers are coming from, they’ll surely be puzzled by the ID.BUZZ’s driving position. Both front seats are so far from the door-mounted armrests that even with my 35-inch sleeve gorilla arms, I couldn’t comfortably use them. VW realizes that, so they’ve mounted outboard armrests on the front seats. That means you can fold down an outside armrest to match the one on the inside.
This works fine while you’re driving, but once you arrive at your destination if you forget to flip the outside armrest up before exiting the van you’ll get a sharp jab in the ribs for your forgetfulness. This probably won’t score well in customer satisfaction scores when the J.D. Power surveys go out.
A cool feature on the outside of the ID.BUZZ is a flip-down hitch receiver. Most of the time it stows up under the bottom of the van. When you need it, pull the red handle and the 2-inch receiver and the trailer lighting connector flip down 90 degrees, ready for the drawbar with a tow ball to hitch your trailer. It has a 2,600-lb. towing capacity, which makes it suitable for towing dirt bikes, personal watercraft, or maybe a small, single-axle camper.
The bus’s steering is good, with a remarkable 31.5-foot turning circle diameter that makes the vehicle easy to maneuver through tight parking lots and into spaces meant for compact cars in an age of hulking SUVs parked on either side. When you want to let VW do some of the work, the ID.BUZZ’s Travel Assist hands-on steering assistance system works pretty well, though I found that seems a little over-caffeinated turning into corners, frequently clipping the apex with an inside tire touching the paint line on the edge of the lane.
The LED headlights are first-rate, with adaptive front lighting that bends the beam into corners and what VW calls “Poor Weather Lights” (aka fog lights) for better visibility. A night drive on the winding Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park put these lights to the test, providing the chance to show the system’s excellence. Of course, onlookers only notice the glowing white “VW” emblem on the ID.BUZZ’s flat face.
That drive to and from the mountains saw estimated driving range plummet during the climb to the top and then give all those miles back on the return leg. The low, 35-mph speed limit in the park aided the driving range, but the majority of my driving was on highways outside the park at normal highway speeds.
Over 255 miles, the ID.BUZZ consumed 90 percent of its estimated driving range, showing 10 percent remaining when I returned home after traveling 20 miles past its predicted range. VW says the bus will recover from that level to 80 percent in 26 minutes using a charging station that can provide its maximum of 200kW. They also promise that the intelligent battery conditioning system will ensure that you actually get that result, but no other EV ever seems to charge at the claimed rate so if this is true it will be the first. I plugged it into my ChargePoint 9.6 kW Level 2 AC home charger and recharged it overnight instead of paying a premium at a DC fast charger.
The price for this retro-futuristic tribute to the Woodstock generation (of cars) is dear, but it is in line with the bottom line on other EVs. The base price for the tested rear-drive Pro S Plus model is $63,495, and the as-tested price, including destination charges, came to $66,040.
This is a lot, but it sits solidly within the price range of the Kia EV9 electric SUV, which is comparable in many respects. The pragmatic alternative is the plug-in hybrid Chrysler Pacifica minivan, which lets you drive on electric power in your daily routine and only needs gas for road trips, because that vehicle can cost $20,000 less.
But as VW’s market research shows, no one is cross-shopping a plug-in minivan. They want a battery EV and they want the ID.BUZZ’s hippie heritage. That is, if they have a good enough memory to recall that long ago.
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