- volkswagen's electric id.buzz minivan is taking another baby step toward production, as it's been seen cold-weather testing in northern sweden.
- the retro-future styling has been toned down somewhat from the original concept shown back in 2017, but the van is on track to launch in north america in 2023 as a 2024 model.
- the van seen testing in these photos is still partly camouflaged, particularly on the front end around the headlamps and front emblem.
the long-awaited 2024 volkswagen id.buzz is getting ever closer to becoming reality. these photos show it wearing very little camouflage in cold-weather testing near the arctic circle. from these photos, the electric minivan has lost some of its retro charm in the transition from concept to production vehicle, but it's still looking attractive and practical.
originally shown in 2017 at the detroit auto show, the id.buzz concept was touted as a modern interpretation of the 1960s microbus, an icon of the hippie era. the id.buzz will feature an all-electric powertrain and shares its structure with the smaller id.4 suv. we expect the base model to have rear-wheel drive and come with around 200 horsepower; an all-wheel-drive variant could offer around 300 horsepower from dual electric motors.
if the id.4 is anything to go by, the id.buzz should deliver a driving range somewhere around 260 miles of range per charge. an onboard charger capable of dc fast charging is expected to be standard, resulting in charging times as little as 30 minutes to reach an80 percent charge.
unfortunately, there are no spy photos of the id.buzz's interior yet, and we don't see a third row of seats through the windows in these photos. but we do expect the id.buzz to come standard with such a feature, which may help the id.buzz catch on with families seeking a three-row electric vehicle at an affordable price. we expect to find out more about volkswagen's new ev van closer to the id.buzz's reveal date, which should be sometime late next year.
we recently had a chance to see a prototype of the id.buzz in person in munich, germany, where volkswagen and partner argo ai are testing an autonomous driving system. that prototype wore much more camo than the one seen here and had external radar and lidar sensors mounted on all sides for the computer vision system, making it hard to get a good idea of what the production van would look like.