The Buzz Fades

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VW is selling lots of vehicles – except for the electric ones. Sales of those – models like the ID4 – are down 31 percent so far this year, which is what they call in detective circles a clue that buyers are becoming hesitant about buying a battery powered device rather than a vehicle.

This probably explains why VW has become hesitant about trying to sell more devices – at least in this country. The ID 7 – which is a device like the ID4 but larger-sized (kind of like an iPhone with a larger screen than the previous iPhone) will be held back from the North American market for the foreseeable future.

“As market dynamics continue to change, Volkswagen is delaying the introduction of the ID 7 sedan in the U.S. and Canada.”

Italics added.

“Market dynamics”? Why not just say devices aren’t selling? Well, for the obvious reason. VW – the industry – has “committed” to selling that which doesn’t. It’s called painting yourself into a corner.

The ID 7 was supposed to have been added to VW’s lineup for the 2025 model year.

It’s interesting to note the parallels that exist between EV Hesitancy and “vaccine” Hesitancy – the latter in air fingers quotes to reiterate the point that people were not told the truth about the mRNA drugs they were pressured to take. They were told these drugs would prevent them from getting sick – not “reduce the severity of symptoms” when they got sick. And they were told that if they took the drugs, it would end “the pandemic” because new infections would be prevented.

They weren’t.

And this business about “reducing the severity of symptoms” is of a piece with “climate change” in that both are of a piece with “save up to 50 percent” on your next purchase of whatever-it-is they’re trying to get you to buy. We all know that “save up to 50 percent” probably means it’ll cost you 100 percent – but rubes buy it because hope sells really well when people want to believe in it.

Fewer do anymore. Whether we’re talking ’bout the mRNA drugs that didn’t “stop the spread” or the devices we’re told will prevent the “climate” from “changing.”

Like the ID 4.

This device stickers for just shy of $40,000 to start and for that sum you get a compact-crossover-shaped device with an advertised driving range of just over 200 miles – which is about half the driving range of a small crossover with an engine rather than a battery like VW’s Taos.

You can almost buy a second Taos – $23,995 to start – for the price of one device. Or you could just buy one Taos and put the almost-$20k you didn’t spend on a spare Taos (or just the one device) toward gas for the next ten years or so.

The Taos carries 13 gallons of gas in its tank, which means it costs about $45 to fill it up at current prices (around $3.30 per gallon). That’s about $180 monthly and so about $2,200 annually. So, the $20k, give or take, that you actually did save would be enough to keep you going – in a 2024 Taos – until about 2034 or so.

And you won’t have to spend money on more expensive tires 30 percent sooner, either.

EV pushers don’t advertise the fact that battery powered devices are extremely heavy – the ID 4 weighs 4,308 lbs. vs. 3,181 lbs. for the roughly same-sized Taos – and that weight increases friction which reduces tire life by about 30 percent and necessitates larger-footprint tires to absorb and distribute all that weight. Tires for devices are device-specific and also cost about 30 percent more to replace than tires for vehicles.

So it’s kind of like “reduces the severity of symptoms” in that people are no longer interested in buying that – especially given what it costs them.

Nonetheless, VW isn’t admitting that devices are the new “vaccines.” In a statement released earlier this week announcing the almost 30 percent increase in North American sales of its vehicles, VW did not mention that more than 31 percent decline in sales of its ID 4 device:

We remain committed to electric mobility – this year we have enhanced the range and performance on our all-electric 2024 ID.4 SUV, and we are thrilled to welcome the iconic Microbus back into our lineup with the arrival of the 2025 ID. Buzz in Q4.”

Well, no.

If VW “remains committed to electric mobility” then why did VW decide not to add the ID 7 device to its North American sales lineup? That seems to be walking-back of VW’s “commitment.”

And “thrilled”?

Really? How about alarmed – about the plummeting interest in devices such as the ID 4? And if VW is “thrilled” then why no mention of the 31 percent drop in sales of the ID 4 device?

Hey, look – a squirrel!

As far as the device that looks like a Microbus – it isn’t. And looks-like isn’t going to sell this device, which reports indicate will start around $50,000 when it becomes available later this year.

The actual Microbus sold because the people could buy it. Particularly young people. Not just a few rich old people. There may be a few elderly former hippies who, for the sake of nostalgia, will buy this device – but that’s a small pool to draw from. VW probably knows this, of course. But the company has backed itself into a corner by “committing” to “electric mobility” and making the announcement that it would be resurrecting the Microbus as a device.

It’s hard to pull the plug on that now.

The irony is that these devices may end up pulling the plug on VW – and every other car company that has “committed to electric mobility.”

. . .

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41 COMMENTS

    • ‘I Douche?’ Who knows / who cares. What it connotes to your average Americlown is being accosted by an AGW (Armed Government Worker) demanding Ihre Papiere bitte.

      It’s not just Volkswagen, though. Imbecile auto makers are masters of destroying and diluting brand equity. Like pea-brained dinosaurs, they are too congenitally retarded to survive much longer. I’d pay for a hunting license to pump their bloated, anencephalic forms full of .50 caliber shells on the black beach of a tar pit.

      ID = Idiot Dipshit [supplier and customer alike]

  1. This is only possible because corporate America has accepted fascism, believing it would give them an advantage.

    It will eventually crush them if they happen to be in a disfavored industry.

    • The whole scheme of the government enabling the creation of “artificial persons” to protect the corporate participants from personal liability IS nothing but a paved road to fascism.

  2. If you have a Buzz, double-entendre there, you’ll be the only bozo on the bus in your Buzz getting buzzed.

    The thing is butt ugly, call it the Butt, fits.

    Why not bulld it the way it was, that’s what buyers want. 100 grand for a restored VW bus is an asking price.

    Best bad decision ever. Hands down.

    As with that Bibi character, best bad decision evah.

    Still your fault. For everything.

    • “I have a dream” with musical notes abounding. A 155 mm artillery shell out of nowhere impacts that electrified monstrosity head on, leaving millions of little pieces of debris around the scene of obliteration.

    • ‘As with that Bibi character, best bad decision evah.’ — drumpish

      You recall Ray Bradbury’s SF novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953). The protagonist, Guy Montag, is a fireman whose job is to burn down houses in which books have been discovered.

      Three generations on, Israel has made it come true:

      Israeli soldiers set fire to Aqsa University’s library in Gaza City and took pictures of themselves in front of the flames.

      https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1793628894245118205

      One is surprised only that these degenerate zionist nihilists didn’t first defecate on those tomes before setting them alight.

      • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVUxK1mNups

        I support U.S. Olympic rollerball.
        “The books you ordered have been transcribed and summarized.”
        “They’re afraid of you, Jonathan.”

        One of the smartest people I ever met became a librarian.
        She is one of the few people I have met about whom I could unequivocally say, “This person is smarter than I am.”
        Knowledge is power.
        Librarians, being the keepers of knowledge, are dangerous.
        Burn, baby, burn.

  3. VW didn’t “back themselves into a corner”. They were shoved there at gunpoint while being beaten with batons. VW didn’t want to stop making the highly desirable and profitable diesels. GovCo used its penchant for violence to stop those sales to protect their Marxist religion of Environmentalism from global ridicule.

      • They were one of the last ones to submit. They probably thought their “compliance” would sate the sadistic lust of GovCo bureaucrats and they would be left alone. On the contrary, their submission only resulted in more abuse. Just like the Struggle Sessions of the Red Chinese. “Surely this can’t be happening. How could we be punished for making a great product?” They didn’t realize it was obedience training.

    • WW is tied with a German government too much especially after pandemic when its supply chains collapsed.
      Germany is a direct colonly on US intelligence agencies and Germans have a huge number of literal NPCS I would say more then 50%.I only met some old men who dont buy in to Co2 bad electric good agenda. Most of younger Germans are indoctrinated.

    • Maybe but they rolled over like whipped puppy. For all the money they pissed away on that stupid case they would have spent a small fraction of that unleashing a flood of lawyers and kept it up for years. Orange man probably could have been convinced to pull the plug so yo.speak on the case. Instead VW threw itself on the mercy of the court to.find out that sense
      Img fear and weakness like a feral animal the DotGov pounced and went for the jugular

      • Hi Alex,

        Yup. At the time, I privately spoke with some people within VW and tried to persuade them to fight. As by hiring heavy hitting PR firms, buying ad space on TV, etc. – to explain the facts to people. Instead, the decision was made to allow the government/Leftists to lie to the people by equating a pedantic case of “cheating” on government tests with meaningful harm to people. And now here we are.

        VWs of the past were literally people’s cars – i.e., cars designed to be within the grasp of ordinary people. They were inexpensive but generally well-engineered, durable, easy to repair and affordable. Plus they had personality. It’s a shame all that’s gone now.

    • That is because the Japanese people are much smaller physically than the overweight western slobs that try to fit their bloated bodies into such a vehicle. Lol!

  4. But…but.. We all know that the only way to reduce noxious life-enabling CO2 emissions is to force everybody to drive heavier vehicles! It’s “science” ya know! Brought to you by the same wonderful people who brought you the Clot-Shot.

    Those old efficient, simple, light VW buses weren’t cluttered with the latest technology, so how could anyone expect them to “save the planet”? It takes science and tyranny to do that! Certainly, simplistic, durable vehicles that could be kept alive with little more than a screwdriver and a pair vise-grips, and which were cheap to purchase and maintain are bad. VERY bad!

  5. ‘we are thrilled to welcome the iconic Microbus back into our lineup with the arrival of the 2025 ID. Buzz in Q4.’ — VW PR flack

    Though obviously designed with an eye toward aerodynamics, this two-toned lard-ass shoebox weighs 5,300 lbs — more than double what a real Microbus weighs. The lame hipsters at Motor Trend called it ‘adorably awkward.’ How can ye celebrate Earth Day in a selfish exploitative materials-hog like this lumbering beast?

    That’s no Buzz. It’s a Bust waiting to happen.

    Lather was thirty years old today
    And lather came foam from his tongue
    He looked at me eyes wide and plainly said
    Is it true that I’m no longer young?

    — Jefferson Airplane, Lather (1968)

    • And I should have told him no youre not old
      And I should have left him smiling
      Babywise. . .

      But thats all over.

      Grace on Ed Sullivan I will never forget.

      Thank you.

  6. Remember when VW made the V10 Diesel Tuareg? I remember. Lame looks on the outside, awesomeness under the hood. A fascinating anomaly I would totally like to have. Kind of like the Phaeton. VW needs to get back to this kind of stuff, but they will probably only get more repressed, dropping down more and more into motorcycle size engines in their cars.

  7. VW don’t ever seem to have been committed to electric mobility at all, however they most certainly remain committed to electric immobility. That’s a reasonable conclusion to draw after years of VW dragging their feet on charging performance and driving range on their battery-powered penalty boxes, so much so that they are not even able to deliver them with a minimum 300 mile range and a maximum charging time of five minutes for 0-100 % battery capacity, which are quite modest expectations for a car in 2024. The result is that VW’s EVs are anything but mobile.

    • Superconducter tech is required to move that much juice. Its other applications at present keep it buried under top secret status.

  8. “the ID 4 weighs 4,308 lbs”

    It’s hard to fathom just how much heavier the device / appliances are. My 24-year-old GMC Sierra’s curb weight is just a couple hundred pounds heavier than the ID-4.

  9. Technocracy dot news had a story up yesterday about these billionaire psychopaths and Big Pharma wanting to develop vaccines for climate change. If they succeed, first these “vaccines” will be deployed for livestock, and then they wish to make them for humans too, in which case tyrannical governments run by climate change zealots may say that people who DON’T take these drugs are a “Danger to the planet”.

    https://www.technocracy.news/one-health-climate-vaccines-are-coming-for-the-cattle-then-for-humans/

  10. Took the bmw on a drive down the coast to visit relatives because my husband who usually drives his pickup was unable to go. I was surprised at the great highway mileage. Got gas at Kettleman City and when I resumed driving the range was 495 miles. In the city its only 395 on a full tank. Didn’t see many EVs on I5!

    • We have a 2016 Jetta which was the first year model after the “cheating” eliminated the diesel engines.

      Even with the 2.0 L turbo replacing the “dirty” diesel engine, the car has 500+ miles of range, which meant that a drive last year from Nasville to Austin was only two tanks.

  11. ‘These devices may end up pulling the plug on VW – and every other car company that has “committed to electric mobility.” — eric

    Indeed. Auto makers are classed in the consumer discretionary sector, along with big box stores, restaurant chains, appliance makers, and the like. ‘Discretionary’ means stuff people buy when then they’re feeling flush, and do without when they’re not.

    They’ve had a 14-year tail wind since 2010 with (until recently) zero interest rates and (barring Mar-Apr 2020) one long economic boom, with a final once-in-a-lifetime blowout in 2021-2022 thanks to Covid Cash (it’s raining dollars!).

    Sadly, my friends, those halcyon days are over. Desperate, Weimar-like borrowing — another trillion of fedgov debt added every hundred days — is barely keeping this shitshow afloat. And gov-sponsored EeeVees, being costlier and less practical than ICE vehicles, are wilting first.

    As with people, the economy too is disproportionately affected by shock. It’s shocking when fast food meals are pushing 20 dollars. It’s shocking that Breshnev … errr, ‘Biden,’ is mulling letting the reckless Ukies rocket Russia with US weapons.

    “Biden’s” macabre freak show is just one shock away from a confidence-busting lurch downward into recession, which could chop auto sales in half. Globally (ex-China) we might end up with just a handful of gov-sponsored Mobility Cos. After the US sabotaged its gas pipeline from Russia, high-energy-cost Germany is no longer a suitable platform for making cars at all. Gefickt eingeschädelt, comrades:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5QGkOGZubQ

  12. When I am in the market for a car I always check the specifications( wheelbase, length, interior room, engine size, power etc etc. However it is becoming difficult to find some of these specs. I was at the VW site https://www.vw.com/en.html
    and try as I might I could not locate where they kept the specs like length, wheelbase, interior space. I should send VW an email or someone here could point me to the right area.

    The Tiguan is nice but 29 highway Mpg! That seems a bit low for a VW. I am a former owner of two VW’s, a ’72 Karman Ghia and the ’77 Scirocco. Poor man’s Porches but I didn’t have a lot of money back then. If I was smart back then I would have bought a large American sedan like the Ford Galaxie or Chevy Impala. One could sleep in the back seat comfortably. I also considered a full size Ford or Chevy van. You could put a couch in back and really chill out while touring the USA or in town.

  13. The failure of EVs will not be a failure of technology, chemistry or any of the Science Gods. Certainly won’t be a failure of the central planners. No, it will be a failure of capitalism. When Weekend at O’Biden’s II is released next January, look for an “honest” assessment of the state of EVs in the US, and comparisons to how “well” they are working in China. This will be a call to action for the Reds, howling at the top of their lungs that you rubes are just too stupid to make your own decisions. The factories must be taken over by the “experts” in DC, they’ll make it profitable. Oh don’t cry for Elon, he’ll be compensated well for his Tesla shares, giving him more startup cash for his crypto-bank X.com. The rest of the players, well, they’ll just have a new customer, much like Boeing and McDonnell Douglas. Instead of the Pentagon, it will be the DOT or maybe some new agency. Nice work if you can get it.

    And it will be good news for Warren Buffet too. After all, BRK owns plenty of shoe brands. Because they won’t be forcing people into EVs, they’ll be putting them back on the shoe leather express.

    https://berkshirehathawayshoes.com

  14. >There may be a few elderly former hippies who, for the sake of nostalgia, will buy this device
    Well, no.
    “Elderly former hippies” would want the Real thing, not something which vaguely resembles a vehicle which was manufactured more than 50 years ago, but which has none of the historic vehicle’s features or operating characteristics.

    Among other things, so-called “hippies” were about rejecting fake stuff and scams, IOW the “plastic” phoniness being foisted upon the younger generation by its more deceitful elders, for whom “marketing” was king.

    Here’s what the late Bill Hicks had to say about “marketing”:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHEOGrkhDp0

  15. News this morning – a school district vote in my area overwhelming rejected the purchase of an electric bus. The electric bus cost 109,000, while a new gas one costs 33,000 (even with all the beautiful NYS tax breaks for such purchases). The voters said no, which is actually quite amazing since voters NEVER say no to the school budgets that pass every year with the same 300 people (mainly school workers) voting yes no matter the property tax increase.

    Governor ‘Ho is pissed the tax slaves are rejecting her climate saving mandates.

    • Good to see sanity prevail for once, can buy three gas powered buses for the price of one battery powered device. Plus the bonus that your kids won’t get incinerated when the battery catches fire.

      • Mike – just wait until those electric busses Worcester and Fall River got have issues. But we will never hear about it since all of are local news are just state run media….

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