Have you seen the new VW ID Buzz yet? It is a battery powered device made to resemble the old VW Microbus, which was based on Beetle underthings. Which is why the latter was inexpensive to buy and operate, as a Beetle was. The ID Buzz is the antithesis of that – and arguably an affront, to the very name of Volkswagen, which literally translates as “people’s car.”
The Beetle was the German Model T – intended to make car ownership accessible to . . . the people. How many people can afford a $60,000 to start device?
. . .
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Yesterday I drove past a Hyundai dealer & there was a car fire in the lot.
Not sure if it was an EV or not. But what seems more likely?
Maybe the staff is trying to keep warm? Sales are slow lately, no money for electric….
The Taillights flickering is a result of viewing LED lights through a camera, which can sometimes create a strobe effect when the frame rate of the camera doesn’t line up with the flicker of the LEDs. I think all LEDs flicker on and off by the nature of their design, yet another reason i miss beautiful incandescent bulbs.
Hat tip for the explanation, Mike!
It’s due to the switching frequency of the PWM dimming circuit. You know how the interior dome light on some cars illuminates and dims slowly instead of just turns on? That’s also a PWM.
Lamps have been dimmed this way for decades but you can’t see it with an incandescent bulb as they react very slow compared an LED. The filament will (relatively) slowly change while the LED turns full on and off each cycle. With your naked eyes you can’t quite see it, your eyes acting like a low pass filter essentially so we just perceived a dimmer light in both cases.
LEDs that are driven without a PWM don’t flicker. LEDs take to dimming so easily that you almost never see them not driven that way. This is both a convenience (so you can change the brightness) and a power saving feature.
If you point a very high speed shutter at an incandescent bulb on 60Hz AC you’ll see this effect, too.
Eric – these cars are so useless they are flogging them for 150 a month out here (probably to keep them from catching on fire at the lot. In perspective a central london tube pass is 180! maybe it will be come “the peoples car” again after all!!
Morning, Nasir!
I should be getting one of these devices to test drive soon. I expect it’ll be . . . interesting!
It sounds as if someone at VW wants a brutally honest review to kill this boondoggle.
I can’t imagine the market for these being much larger than people like my neighbor, the stay-at-home housewife who got bored with her new Bronco and makes the purchasing decisions at their house regarding Garage Queens.
Yours’ was the only review of the Lightning I saw which brought up the cautions printed in the manual against using “fast” chargers.
Rode in Berlin in one of these devices in summer ’23.
About a 5 mile trip, it was like a carnival ride, tremendous acceleration and deacceleration. Great fun! Two liters of beer helped too.
But an everyday vehicle??
Aww hell no!!!
My neighbor has an ID Buzz, which replaced a new Ford Bronco in their throne room as Garage Queen.
I swear the footprint of the Buzz is bigger than the Bronco’s was prior to the swap.
The original VW Microbus was, in reality, far “greener” than this thing called the ID Buzz.
For one thing, it took fewer resources and less energy to build. It did not require that large quantities of toxic rare earth minerals be mined and refined, used simple materials like steel, aluminum, rubber, glass, and fabric, and was compact and light. It also consumed few resources in its use, with a small air cooled engine that used little fuel and oil, and small tires and brakes. And it could be easily repaired and thus be kept running for a long time—and many are still on the road today. And when it was beyond repair, it could be easily scrapped and its materials readily recycled.
None of that is true of the ID Buzz.
If they put a gas engine in this thing and with reasonable starting price it would sell
The Buzz is *big*. Anything less than a six cylinder engine would be too small to move the “micro” bus.
I saw one yesterday when I was with a friend. I feel if they took the time to retool it into a proper gas or diesel and made it rwd biased awd, it’d probably pick up in sales, but EV’s in this day and age of Trumpism (love him or hate him) is DOA
Hi Carmelo,
EVs may be DOA in the age of Trumpism, but there are STILL states that are pushing to have EVs be the ONLY new vehicles people can buy, which would likely expand to a BAN on sales of older gas vehicles as well, with the excuse of “We’ve gotta do it because of climate change!” It’s hard to decide who are the bigger chumps….people who STILL belieeeeeeeeeeeeve the narratives involving climate change or those who STILL belieeeeeeeeeeeeve the narratives around COVID, face diapers, and the mRNA “vaccines”.
I saw that dealers were leasing out EVs to get them off the lot, where the lease was basically covered by the taxpayer subsidies. So I looked at one as a replacement for the wife’s Town and Country.
First impression, the thing is frigging huge- much bigger than the 60s and 70s VW bus. And no, we didn’t even do a test drive. The range is maxed out around 230 miles which barely gets to town and back around here.
The 14 year old Town and Country still gets 24mpg and is infinitely practical and very comfortable for a cross country road trip. I cannot imagine what a pain this would be in an ID Buzz.
Let’s just call it the ID-BUST … since Übermensch-wagen is too hard to pronounce, plus it’s in some cockamamie foreign language too. 🙁
If only the ID-BUST were Volkswagen’s sole exposure to EeeVees. But no, VW has taken a punt on Scout Motors as well. How’s that workin’ out?
‘South Carolina state officials have fined Richland County $3 million over what inspectors said were violations found at the Scout Motors plant construction site near Blythewood.’ 7 May 2025
https://tinyurl.com/y5nc8hmf
Not VW’s problem, since the socialist/RINO Peoples Republic of South Carolina foolishly agreed to ‘invest’ [sic] $2 billion of Other People’s Money into this farcical fiasco.
But it’s a bad omen, I tell ya.
“This time we aren’t fighting the Yankees, we’re fighting our ‘friends.'” — Atticus Finch to Scout, To Kill a Mockingbird
There are still quite a few of the old Type 2s out there.
http://octo.org/index.php/sample-page/show-flyer-2/
I’ve seen a couple. They appear to be permanent fixtures at the dealerships. Look cool but nobody’s interested.
Hi Steve,
There’s a VW store near me that I drive by often. They have three or four of them parked out front – where they’ve been parked for the past several months. Who pays $60k-plus for a VW? Not that there’s anything wrong with VW. But it’s not Lexus or Mercedes. It’s dissonant. Didn’t VW learn its lesson with the Phaeton?
Yes those are $60,000 to start. The top of the line lists at $70,000. You could buy a minivan or large SUV and keep the extra money to “STUFF”.
Another new clunker for sale that no one can buy.
Besides, who are the nitwits that design a vehicle that hurts your lying eyes?
Rent them out at Hertz and let them put you in the driver’s seat.
Eric,
I’m convinced that there are indeed efforts to make automobiles so expensive that ONLY uber wealthy elitists can afford one. In the U.S., it’s to some degree from politicians who call themselves DEMOCRATS, who at the same time claim they’re “Fighting for the little guys” or “Saving the planet from cliiiiiiiiiiiimate change”. I even heard that Bernie Sanders is flying around in private jets to his laughably named “Fighting Oligarchy” rallies, and when someone calls him out on his use of private jets, he invariably concocts a lame excuse. Sounds like whenever Bill Gates or John Kerry were called out on THEIR use of private jets. Sanders is also one of those WEALTHY politicians who screech endlessly about CLIIIIIIIIIMATE CHANGE, which also makes him a GINORMOUS PHONY.
If the number one shill for Big Pharma in the Senate won’t fight oligarchy, who will?
Hi Horst,
The ironic thing with Bernie Sanders is, if he were actually “Fighting the oligarchy”, wouldn’t he by definition have to be fighting himself?
One could also make the case that Big Pharma is its own oligarchy given the tremendous influence it has over numerous Congress critters.
The watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside) in the US EPA crucified VW on the dieselgate cross of efficient and affordable diesel engines. Not only did VW have to pay $19 billion in fines while Ford and GM, who had been circumventing the same rules in the same fashion, got off scott free, but VW was then forced to bet their entire farm on EVs.
How do you put lipstick on an EV pig? Tesla was able to monopolize billions in subsidies and was willing to cheat their consumers with their “direct sales” model that provides no dealer support. VW had a massive dealer infrastructure for after sales service that had to be supported too.
Porsche tried the Taycan. Audi tried the Etron. Jaguar tried the E-pace. BMW had the I3. Ford had the Mustang and Lightening. All represent billions of wasted capital and malinvestments.
VW was forced to come up with am entire line of inexpensive EV transport which everyone knew would provide no profits. An extra dollop of “Muh Holocaust” and Nazi guilt by association was ladled over the top. So clearly VW needed some kind of EV product which they could sell at a profit. They tried to pull it off with the Buzz. Is it really worse than all the other EV Albatross?
Don’t blame VW. Blame the watermelons.
The two basic ways to get a million dollars: Get someone to give you a million bucks or get a million people to give you a buck. Everything else falls somewhere in between.
At one time it was thought that selling millions of something was the key to wealth and prosperity. But that means you have a race to the bottom on price and ever increasing cost of adding new features. Clearly the old guard manufacturers have abandoned this model, likely due to knowing they cannot compete on 3rd world labor, but also because everyone’s getting in on the act, meaning any marketing you do will be drowned out by the competition’s marketing.
Better to limit your potential market and specialize. Get closer to that millionaire with money to burn and away from the hoi polloi who probably won’t have the means to purchase your product anyway. Best example is the US military contractors, selling products to one customer (who spends other people’s money) that are custom designs and in many cases actually illegal to sell to anyone else.
Nice work if you can get it (and are OK with being a horrible person).
And unsellable , I drive by VW dealer every day heading for the forest(work), they have had two on the lot for months they keep moving them around the lot to make it appear that they are moving the monstrous lemons. They have no or minimal resale valve. They cost more than my first house. They are definitely not the people’s car….. maybe could change their name to Wokewagan .
Wokewagen, LOL!
I’ve seen the ID Buzz and you can add ugly to the unaffordable.