Volkswagen ID Buzz review

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New long-wheelbase variant, with a larger battery, more powerful motor and versatile configurations, shows the ID Buzz at its best

In 2022, Volkswagen’s effort to electrify its model range resulted in the launch of a new, different and vaguely recognisable kind of electric family car, and unlike the brand's other ID cars so far (which have spawned Audi, Cupra and Skoda siblings), this one is VW-only.

Its electric cars are proving popular thanks to their diversity, but none is more unique than this: the Volkswagen ID Buzz.  

The ID Buzz, says the brand, is “the new face of future-orientated, sustainable family mobility” and has the lofty goal of tempting families with active lifestyles – and some with longer memories and more sentimental tendencies, perhaps – to convert to electric. 

In principle, and leaving aside how it’s powered, the Buzz is a full-size monocab MPV of a kind that found favour on our roads 20 years ago but has since fallen out of it.

Call it a ‘minibus’ if you like, but it’s unlike key rivals because it adopts a relatively sophisticated passenger car platform rather than being adapted from a commercial vehicle.

You might be more inclined to call it a ‘Microbus’, of course, or a ‘hippy van’. The Buzz’s name is a play on that of VW’s famous Type 2 ‘Bus’ of 1949, which inspired a cult following that lasted decades and permeated popular culture widely.

So can the new Buzz achieve something similar, so many years later, for a new generation?

Volkswagen ID Buzz range at a glance

With the arrival of the long-wheelbase ID Buzz and the more powerful, all-wheel-drive ID Buzz GTX, the model’s range has expanded substantially since its launch. 

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The range starts with the standard short-wheelbase ID Buzz, which has five seats and a cavernous boot. 

But the long-wheelbase model is where the ID Buzz finally reveals its full potential as a proper, people-carrying MPV. The additional space is more evident on the inside. It comes with seven seats as standard in a 2/3/2 configuration, while a 2/2/2 six-seat layout or a 2/3 five-seat configuration can also be selected. 

With the seven-seat option, the third row of seats can be removed to create a 1340-litre cargo space – an increase of 219 litres over the SWB model.

There’s also the ID Buzz Cargo, a commercial vehicle version of the electric MPV with a more traditional van layout. It features a 2+1-seat cab and black bumpers, with a lower equipment specification. 

Volkswagen offers the ID Buzz in two trim levels, Life and Style, with prices starting from just under £60,000. Life models feature 10-colour ambient lighting, wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, sat-nav, a reversing camera, a heated steering wheel and heated front seats.

Style models get 30-colour ambient lighting, an electric tailgate, more powerful, automatic headlights, a multi-flex boot board load-bay divider, and 20in alloy wheels. 

The Buzz comes with a choice of batteries and motors, which we’ve listed in the table below. The LWB ID Buzz has introduced a new 79kWh battery and more powerful 282bhp motor, which arrived following the uprated Volkswagen ID 4. 

The ID Buzz GTX sits at the top of the range, with an eye-popping 335bhp, all-wheel drive, and a host of sporty design details. You can read our Volkswagen ID Buzz GTX review here.

Version Power
ID Buzz SWB 77kWh Pro 201bhp
ID Buzz LWB 79kWh Pro 282bhp
ID Buzz LWB 86kWh Pro 282bhp
ID Buzz GTX SWB 335bhp
ID Buzz GTX LWB 335bhp
ID Buzz Cargo Commercial 77kWh 201bhp
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DESIGN & STYLING

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02 VW ID Buzz RT 2023 gentle corner

The success of the ID Buzz's design can be judged on several different levels, so let’s start with the obvious one: is it a worthy modern successor of the Type 2?

The car’s outline and its primary design features – oversized VW roundel on the bonnet, almost full-length glasshouse, evocative styling of the D-pillar – are references to its ancestor executed neatly and studiously enough to make the effect land without the car becoming a laboured pastiche.

The slats on the Buzz’s D-pillar pay homage to the Type 2’s engine ventilation gills. Like its ancestor, the Buzz is driven from the rear, although its electric motor is less thermally needy.
Illya Verpraet
Road Tester

The bigger problem is that size and proportion prevent the new car from being a perfect match for the old one. At a little over 4.7m long, the Buzz is nearly half a metre longer than its 1949 template and the better part of a foot wider. It also has a wheel-at-each-corner stance, rather than the cutesy in-board wheelbase of the Type 2.

So while VW may argue that the Buzz is a perfectly sized modern family utility vehicle (bridging the small- and medium-size van classes and fitting within a marked parking bay and under a typical multi-storey car park height restrictor), it doesn’t quite do the packaging conjurer’s trick that the Microbus famously managed. The Buzz just isn’t really very ‘micro’. You won’t ever see a five-a-side football team emerge from one or enough stuff produced for a week’s camping trip and wonder how all of it was packed in.

The car is available in short-wheelbase and larger long-wheelbase form. The short-wheelbase model was launched a few years ago powered by a single permanent magnet synchronous electric motor that’s mounted between the rear wheels and draws power from a lithium ion drive battery with 77kWh of usable capacity. 

The long-wheelbase version, launched in 2024, is 250mm longer, at 4962mm. It has extended sliding doors, and extra metal has been added between the C-pillars and the rear wheels. 

The LWB comes as standard with seven seats in a 2/3/2 configuration, while a 2/2/2 six-seat layout or a 2/3 five-seat set-up can also be selected.

Cargo commercial vehicle versions are offered with either a liftback-style hatchback or side-hinged rear doors, with a 2+1-style three-seater with a middle jump seat.

Making all this possible is VW’s MEB platform, which puts the Buzz on the same mechanical footing as the ID 3, ID 4 and ID 5. So beneath it all, this is a passenger car, not an adapted van. It uses all-independent suspension (Cargo versions get stiffer rear coil springs to handle the extra load bay weight) and as a result stands to make at least some hay on ride and handling compared with its commercial-based rivals.

How much difference will that really make, though, on a vehicle that weighs within a whisker of 2.5 tonnes? We’ll see, but it’s worth recording that the diesel-engined VW Transporter van was almost 400kg lighter when we last tested it.

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INTERIOR

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11 VW ID Buzz RT 2023 dashboard

A great many buyers will look to the interior of the ID Buzz for a return on the car’s high showroom price by way of space and versatility. And in some respects, they’ll find both, but VW certainly hasn’t thrown very many added-practicality features in here as standard.

In five-seat form, the Buzz comes with an open floor. VW offers a removable centre console called the Buzz Box, which fixes to the floor via four clips.

Boarding means stepping up into the driver’s seat, which gets twin armrests on Style trim. Upholstery is dark grey or two-tone yellow, orange, green, blue or brown.
Matt Prior
Editor-at-large

It leaves the way clear to pass easily from the front to the back row of seats – a welcome route of egress for those in the front, since the sheer width of the Buzz can leave you with little space to open the front doors when parked in a typical parking bay (where the sliding rear passenger doors can often be opened much more easily).

It’s a sizeable step up into the driver’s seat, in which you sit bent-legged and upright, with plenty of room around you and generous head room in particular. 

Visibility is good and seat comfort is likewise. VW’s choice of lighter cabin materials (synthetic leather is used in place of the real thing, and recycled plastics and textiles are adopted where possible) confounds the workaday ambience you might be expecting. 

Cabin storage is moderately well provided but isn’t as abundant as it might be (likewise to avoid that van vibe, we would guess; no newspapers or tools kept on the upper dashboard, please).

The instrumentation and secondary controls are adequately well thought out, if a little odd. The downsized digital instrument screen behind the steering wheel gives you just enough information about speed, remaining range and assisted driving systems settings, although it could certainly do that at a more easily readable scale.

The transmission controls, meanwhile, are on the right-hand indicator stalk – another slightly regrettable decision, because if they had been accommodated on a controller of their own (on the side of that instrument binnacle for example, as they are on an ID 3), then operating the wipers, indicators and lights might have felt more intuitive. As it is, it all takes just a little relearning.

In the back, the second-row seats slide and recline, but they don’t tumble forward and they can’t be removed, in the five-seater. 

Things get far more versatile in the larger long-wheelbase version. As standard, the model comes with seven seats, configured 2/3/2. There’s also a six-seat option, in a 2/2/2 layout. 

With the seven-seat option, the third row of seats can be removed completely to create a 1340-litre cargo space – an increase of 219 litres over the SWB. It measures 306 litres with all the seats in use. It’s a very usable space, with comfortable seats, and you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who'd complain about the leg room. 

In the cargo bay, available space is pretty generous, but folding the rear seats gives you a fully flat loading area only by virtue of the removable ‘Multi-flex’ boot board, which effectively raises the boot floor. You can load beneath this, but leave it in place and you’ll have only the accessible maximum loading height (for the easy carrying of bulky outdoor equipment, for instance) of a big SUV.

Multimedia system

The strengths and irritations of Volkswagen’s Discover Pro navigation and infotainment system are now well known to the Autocar road test team; in one form or another, it has probably appeared in 20% of our road test subjects over the past two years.

The Buzz comes with a three-year We Connect Plus data connection for music streaming, connected destination searching and smartphone-based app functionality. Wireless device charging is standard, likewise wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto smartphone mirroring.

Thankfully, the ID Buzz’s 2024 model update introduced the brand’s latest infotainment system, running a more advanced 5.2 software version. It’s much snappier than before, but the same, often distracting layout remains. The benefit is that the climate control sliders are now lit so they can be used at night.  

Ultimately, the menu shortcut buttons under the screen are a poor substitute for a proper manual input device and the ‘haptic slider’ ventilation and volume controls prove unintuitive. A cursor controller on the steering wheel spokes would make a big difference, be easy to fit and reduce the time you spend with an arm outstretched, groping for the function you need.

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ENGINES & PERFORMANCE

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20 VW ID Buzz RT 2023 driving shot performance

The ID Buzz is a modern utility vehicle that targets comfort and versatility. It’s responsive and has great drivability but, in standard single-motor form at least, doesn’t really go beyond the performance level of a familiar diesel-engined mid-sized commercial vehicle.

Perhaps you wouldn’t expect it to. (The original Type 2 peaked with a 40bhp flat-twin engine and would do 65mph flat out.) But that doesn’t mean the modern VW Bus isn’t pleasant to drive.

The Buzz has an automated ignition system that automatically shuts down the car when you get out. (Because it’s electric, there’s a danger you could leave it running otherwise.) The drawback? You find yourself deactivating things like lane keeping assistance twice as often.
Illya Verpraet
Road Tester

It has commendable refinement and isolation, picks up speed crisply and smartly around town and feels urgent enough up to about 50mph.

Thereafter, it begins to feel more like its size and weight and labours just a bit at faster motorway speeds. Even so, that it hit 60mph from rest in 9.5sec in damp test conditions suggests it’s a touch quicker in the real world than VW’s performance claims would have it (0-62mph in 10.2sec); and proving capable of 30-70mph in 9.1sec (compared with 9.0sec for the Transporter 2.0 TDI Sportline), it can evidently keep going towards three figures with reasonable urgency when you need it to.

The ID Buzz LWB comes with a more powerful 282bhp motor, which cuts the big bus’s 0-62mph sprint to 7.9sec. We’d suggest this is the most desirable format the Buzz offers, with excellent everyday performance. 

There are limited options for you to choose coasting and battery regen preferences for yourself. You can select a B mode if you want maximum trailing-throttle regen. By picking the less sporting driving modes, you can set the car to better conserve momentum if you prefer, although not quite to coast without any regeneration at all.

The ID Buzz accrues and carries plenty of kinetic energy when it’s running along, though, and all the more with a load on board, so a ‘maximum coast’ efficiency driving mode that trims regen right down to zero might better allow you to get optimal efficiency. Other EV makers do offer one. And optimal efficiency and range are likely to remain concerns for plenty of ID Buzz drivers for a while yet.

 

RIDE & HANDLING

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21 VW ID Buzz RT 2023 front corner

So is this where VW’s decision to base the modern Microbus on a passenger car platform and not a commercial equivalent pays dividends? To an extent, yes – but you’ll have to be a little bit choosy about exactly where you address that question in order to get the answer that VW would want.

The ID Buzz is a surprisingly wieldy, manoeuvrable and composed drive when nipping around urban environments, and it maintains respectable body control out of town. It’s settled and stable on the motorway and fairly quiet.

Wheel sizes start with a 19in rim (standard on Life trim) and rise through 20in to 21in – all with a chrome and black two-tone look and all with Airstop run-flat tyres as standard.
Richard Lane
Deputy road test editor

But it’s a vehicle with a natural speed limit on country roads, and its sheer mass will come to the fore very readily if you seek to carry a bit too much speed.

When push comes to shove, the Buzz handles more like a van than a passenger car, because it’s heavy and high-sided. So gently nudging into understeer in a way that a comparable SUV probably wouldn’t is ultimately how it remains stable and secure.

The steering feels passenger-car pacy (having 2.9 turns between locks and plenty of available steering angle). So despite its size, the car is easy to swing around junctions and roundabouts.

Body roll is well resisted at town speeds, meaning occupants aren’t thrown around during normal driving on better surfaces, and head toss is effectively minimised.

Seek out a rougher road and the ride becomes more animated, though, with just occasional hints of crudeness from our test car’s optional 21in wheels.

Contact with the ground is always maintained, and while wheel dexterity feels in short supply at times, vertical body movements are seldom allowed to run totally out of control.

But, put simply, your passengers won’t be comfortable if you’re driving in too much of a hurry – and will probably tell you as much. Stay within the well-telegraphed comfort zone, though, and they ought to be as happy as they might be in almost any passenger car of similar size.

Comfort and isolation

21 Vw id buzz rt 2023 front corner 0

Three numbers illustrate the key advantage that the ID Buzz offers here. Our noise meter recorded 63dBA of cabin noise in the car at a 50mph cruise. The last Land Rover Discovery Sport we road tested (the D180 SE in 2019) was only a decibel quieter, while that crew-cab Transporter 2.0 TDI Sportline van that we tested in 2022 troubled the sensors all the way to 71dBA at the same cruising speed.

Evidently, this vehicle really can be compared with a modern SUV for refinement and it can be expected to be much quieter than rival commercial-based offerings. The electric powertrain operates almost noiselessly; there’s very little resonance from the boxy body structure; and while there is some wind rustle from around the mirrors, pillars and door seals at motorway speeds, road noise is well filtered. Although our test car’s 21in wheels thumped occasionally over sharper edges, they didn’t ruin the air of calm overall.

Comfortable seats and plenty of cabin space complete a convincing showing on this section. In respect of touring manners at least, the ID Buzz really does pass muster as a modern, fairly luxurious family car.

Assisted driving notes

24 Vw id buzz rt 2023 assisted driving 0

The ID Buzz comes averagely well provided with driver assistance technology. Adaptive cruise control with speed limit detection, basic lane keeping assistance, AEB crash mitigation and semi-automated parking systems are included on lower- and upper-grade cars. Adding surround-view parking cameras, Travel Assist traffic jam cruise control and Side Assist automated lane changing means paying £1425 for VW’s Assistance Package Plus (which our test car didn’t have).

The adaptive cruise control has a habit of slowing the car for vehicles in adjacent lanes on the motorway. It detects posted speed limits reliably, but if you want the car to slow in advance of a new limit (rather than only when actually passing the sign), there’s a separate function to engage. The lane keeping system is broadly unobtrusive but still best left off away from the motorway.

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MPG & RUNNING COSTS

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01 VW ID Buzz RT 2023 lead driving

For now, the cheapest ID Buzz starts just above £59,000 and long-wheelbase models command a further premium.

As a result, this is never going to be a strict rival for the similarly sized, electric van-based MPVs offered by the likes of Citroën, Peugeot and Vauxhall.

Spec advice? Stick with Life Pro trim but add the Assistance Package Plus (£1425), two-tone paint (£1800) and Comfort Package Plus (£675, which includes the boot board).
Matt Saunders
Road test editor

Those unwilling to ascribe significant value to the VW’s zero-emissions sustainability, design appeal, refinement, carrying space and superior range compared with key rivals are unlikely to easily justify that cost, but for those who do, for now at least, the ID Buzz is almost in a class of its own.

Our testing of the short-wheelbase model suggests that, during longer-distance touring, owners should expect a usable battery range of a little under 200 miles. The long-wheelbase model with the larger, 86kWh battery, meanwhile, offers a claimed range of up to 286 miles of range, which makes it our pick of the range. 

The SWB model's real-world range is a little shy of VW’s claim, and although it is a way over what rivals offer, it's still close enough to the going rate for a lot of family EVs as to bear comparison.

On our DC rapid charging test, we were disappointed to see charging speed tail off markedly far below a 50% state of charge. Even so, the average rate of charge was still broadly competitive.

Id buzz charging test

 

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VERDICT

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25 VW ID Buzz RT 2023 static

Few new cars have been previewed and teased quite as often as Volkswagen’s ‘new Type 2’ has over the past 20 years. And now that the VW ID Buzz is finally with us, it’s unlikely to disappoint, whether you’re a VW Camper devotee or more of a casual convert who likes the idea of versatility-first electric family motoring.

Except, perhaps, if you were expecting a more typical commercial vehicle price. There’s no denying it's steep. For our test car’s £69,000 after-options price, you could have a top-of-the-range BMW i4 M50 sports saloon or almost two bottom-rung Citroën ë-Spacetourer MPVs.

It’s a little debatable if the ID Buzz offers enough clever cabin modularity to justify that price, and its performance and range, while better than key rivals’, aren’t particular selling points.

But its refinement, drivability and quietly upmarket cabin ambience can be depended on to please owners just as much as its cheery outward appearance surely will. Some might have preferred a more genuinely small and cleverly packaged modern Microbus, others simply a more affordable one.

Which version would we pick? Driving the LWB is as simple as driving the SWB. It rides pliantly, is incredibly endearing and is quicker than before, both on the road and when charging.

As a practical MPV, the LWB offers more than its rivals, beating the likes of the (considerably more expensive) Mercedes-Benz EQV for range, comfort and character. 

The Buzz is now better than ever for longer journeys, and when it only comes in £500 more expensive than the equivalent SWB, the LWB seems a no-brainer. It’s the best option in the Buzz line-up.

Matt Saunders

Matt Saunders Autocar
Title: Road test editor

As Autocar’s chief car tester and reviewer, it’s Matt’s job to ensure the quality, objectivity, relevance and rigour of the entirety of Autocar’s reviews output, as well contributing a great many detailed road tests, group tests and drive reviews himself.

Matt has been an Autocar staffer since the autumn of 2003, and has been lucky enough to work alongside some of the magazine’s best-known writers and contributors over that time. He served as staff writer, features editor, assistant editor and digital editor, before joining the road test desk in 2011.

Since then he’s driven, measured, lap-timed, figured, and reported on cars as varied as the Bugatti Veyron, Rolls-Royce Phantom, Tesla Roadster, Ariel Hipercar, Tata Nano, McLaren Senna, Renault Twizy and Toyota Mirai. Among his wider personal highlights of the job have been covering Sebastien Loeb’s record-breaking run at Pikes Peak in 2013; doing 190mph on derestricted German autobahn in a Brabus Rocket; and driving McLaren’s legendary ‘XP5’ F1 prototype. His own car is a trusty Mazda CX-5.