From the moment I laid eyes on this car, I knew that as a self-proclaimed cool
dad, I had to have one. So, late last
year, I put down a deposit. But here's the thing. I haven't actually gone
through with my purchase yet. And after spending the last week with this demo
car that was provided by VW Canada, I got to say that there's some things that
make me want it less, but also some things that make me want it way more.
First up, there's the look. If you think this thing is striking in pictures, I
got to tell you, in person, it is even better. I think that Volkswagen's work,
taking a classic aesthetic and modernizing it without losing what made
it so iconic, is unparalleled here. And
I'm not the only one who thinks so. This is by far the best conversation starter
vehicle I have ever driven. And this is coming from a guy who drove this and
this. And a big part of that is Volkswagen's daring decision to bring
back the bold two-tone color schemes of the original microbus. And when I say
daring, I really do mean daring. Consumer trends have overwhelmingly been
towards monochromatic vehicles over the last few decades. But it's clear from
the reception to this vehicle that at least some consumers are ready for a
change. See, Volkswagen does have a solid color version of the Buzz, but
apparently it's been selling so poorly that they've started subsidizing the
dealers who have them on their lots to wrap them two-tone to get consumers to
buy them. Coming around back, we've got parking proximity sensors galore, as
well as a rear windshield wiper blade. Never take that for granted now that
I've seen how much Porsche charges for one. Uh, as well as
our Dang it. Sometimes with the key in my pocket, this is unlocked and I can
get my charger out of it. Sometimes I got to unlock the car first. Can't find
the pattern, boys and girls. Since we're down here, Volkswagen boasts a range of
about 375 km depending on the variant of
the Buzz and charging rates of up to 200 kW. So, when I say boasts, I'm using
that word extremely loosely here. The ID
Buzz suffers from what I could best describe as an identity crisis. See, on
the surface, she's a people mover. She's
for camping. She's for the great outdoors. She's for road trips. I mean,
good gravy. Look at the room in this
thing. But under the hood, she's better equipped for short trips to the grocery
store or the soccer pitch. I'm not saying that the Buzz is a car for
nobody. I mean, I have a level two charger in my garage and I don't mind
charging up every couple of days. But if you're the kind of person who wants to
take long road trips or you are totally dependent on public charging
infrastructure, it's hard to recommend something with such limited range. But
that doesn't mean it's out of the running. Ivonne and I have been shopping
kind of hardcore for a new family vehicle recently. And she went from
rating the buzz a three out of 10 from seeing it in pictures to a 7 out of 10
after the first test drive to okay, are we buying one? After spending the last
week with it. And out of every vehicle we saw, the Buzz was rated number one by
its most important customer, my kids.
And there's a lot of little details that contribute to that. I mean, Volkswagen's
been designing cars for as long as most people on Earth have been alive, and
that experience shows. I mean, look here. Here's a simple thing. Ingress and
egress. Getting into this car is so
painless compared to almost any other
family vehicle. Look at that. I mean, I'm not the tallest guy in the world,
but I can practically flip and walk around in here. And my 10-year-old
daughter legitimately can. She can stand
in this car. So getting into the back seat, it's not a chore anymore. This is
big. Volkswagen has taken a nononsense approach to visibility. There's no
middle seat in the back, so the driver has a clear shot out the back window,
which along with the rest of what I call the panoramic Windows throughout the
car, really does contribute to a heightened sense of situational
awareness, which is pretty important when you're carrying precious cargo.
There's also a ton of leg room, even in the back row. Like, how cool is that?
with the middle seats being able to adjust forward and back depending on how
much you require or if you need to have these folded down to carry cargo. And
there's little hidey-holes like all over the place to stash snacks and books and
drinks. Um, not to mention for every seat in the six seat configuration,
there's a USBC charging port which is
great for long road trip. Okay. And since we're
disappointed, I actually want to talk about the seating
configurations. See, here's the thing. I can live with the limited range, but
what's a little tougher for me is the seven seat configuration would have
another seat right here in the middle where I am now, but is only available in
rear wheel drive in crappier colors. Volkswagen, can you explain this to me?
I want all-wheel drive and seven seats and a cool color cuz there's still so
much more to love. Let's look at the
cargo. Check this out. I can store all my swag from
ltstore.com and my backpack and uh
wow, really not much else. But hold on,
it gets
better. There we go. You can fit so much
cargo in this bad boy. But again, the
caveats, not if you want to seat more than four people in this gigantic
vehicle while also carrying cargo. The
sevenseater option is the cool one. Volkswagen, I need the three. Since
we're back here, we got a 12vt plug and a pretty good look at the dual
interfaces for the rear zone climate control, which is nice. You don't have
people fighting over who has controllable climate control. Not that I
speak from experience. Power lift gate. Pretty common these
days. Why don't we talk about the experience for the driver? Oh yeah, this
window's cool. It like goes in and slides back. And oh yeah, this mirror is
less cool. It's square. So like it's
harder to see not just the lane beside you, but also the one over there. I
don't like it. Oh, they're also heated, ventilated, and have a massage function.
The middle of which is the most important one to me. And it
is primo ventilation. No swast for this
guy while on a road trip. While we're up
here, we can look at some more of the hidey-holes. They're in the doors. They're right here. You can put your key
there. There's a spot to put your phone book. I'm not sure where they're going
with that. Another one here by the glove box. Got your glove box. Oh, boom. Cup
holders. And I think this thing like Oh, yeah. Look at that. It pops out like
that. These are cool. There's these modular little things so you can adjust
this guy. And they're functional. You can open a bottle or scrape your
windshield. Oh, yeah. Oh, right. And the whole thing comes out if you just plane
don't want it. See you later, buddy. Ah, dual USBC's for the driver, by the way.
And before you say, "Oh, come on, L. It's one of those that's probably for your passenger." No, no, they're mine.
They've got their own. It's in the door. These are mine. Probably the coolest
thing in here, though, is the electrochic moon roof. With just a swipe
of this interface, you can adjust the opacity of the glass on top of you. What
I don't like so much is that this along with almost everything else is touch.
Now to be clear, I am a digital first kind of person. I don't mind interfacing
with a touchcreen. But what I am not a big fan of Oh, I found the power button.
Not that it works to turn it off or anything. Ah, you hold it. By the way,
before you smart Alex or like Lionus, the start stop button is right there.
Look at this. Hello, buddy. Oh, there. Now it goes.
No.
No. The point is, I don't mind a
touchcreen, but what I'm not a huge fan of is unnecessary capacitive buttons,
and they're everywhere. They're under the touchcreen for the climate control
and volume adjustments, and they're on the steering wheel, more importantly,
where every once in a while, I'll be turning hand overhand, and I'll brush
against something or I'll bump something and end up activating it.
I know the door is open. Shut up. We'll drive in a second. I just have to tell
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more by checking out our link in the description. Gear shifts are handled
with this little interface right here. Do it again to go into regenerative
braking mode. Do it again to go into coasting mode.
Then backwards to go into reverse. It's
okay. Feels a little cheap, but functions just fine. And I'd say the
same about the backup cam to be perfectly honest with you. It's a little bit jittery and stuttery sometimes, but
unlike my car, at least it actually shows you where the heck it is that you
are going. And the bird's eye camera is excellent from my experience. really
giving you a good idea of how close you are to things. Now, let's talk about
what I like more about this car than almost anything else. And I'm going to
show you. If you're like me, you might be the kind of person who, you know,
doesn't always remember to put in your destination before you start moving.
Unlike my Tyan, which by the way is a
Volkswagen Group vehicle, I can just
type a couple quick letters. Boom. Create a new drive. And yeah, if you
drive a Tesla or a Rivian, this is not going to look that impressive to you.
But as someone who either has to use
voice in my Tyan or has this horrible
drawing on the screen interface in my wife's new
vehicle, I got to tell you, whatever reduction in distraction that a car
manufacturer thinks they are achieving by disabling the on-screen keyboard,
they are achieving the opposite. Because being able to key in a special character
here as needed is way faster than trying to do it six separate times with voice
and then ultimately giving up and putting it in on your phone. Oh, by the
way, I flipping love this. Not only does
the heads-up display interface with both the built-in navigation, so this thing,
and also your Android Auto navigation,
but the front dash has this cool little
light that flashes all the way across in various colors when you need to turn
right or turn left. It's just a really
nice little touch. And you know, if you're on a long road trip, for example,
you're driving in a straight line for a long time, it really gets your attention
and makes you think, "Oh yeah, I need to turn. Time to move over to this
lane." That was maximum
acceleration. Right off the line, she's got a lot of torque. She is still an
electric car, but once you're off the
line, my son, I think, put it better than I could.
Did you press the pedal down all the way, Dad? When I was showing him how
fast this car accelerates, she's really not super powerful. I've also found that
the acceleration and braking curve have taken a little bit for me to get used to
because of that quick off the line that I guess they're trying to make the car
feel a bit peppier than it is. It's a little lurchy to start and because of
the way Volkswagen handles the mixing between pressing the pedal and
activating regenerative braking and then
mashing it and actually activating the physical brakes. I find that when I'm
coming to a stop, it's really hard to do perfectly smoothly. My family gets
pretty motion sick pretty easily and has
complained that they get more nauseous in this car than in other ones that I
drive. I can't say for certain that it's not a skill issue, but it is something
that I observed. So, it's iPhone like in the sense that there's no back button.
There's no back in the interface. You just you press the home button and that
takes you to the built-in navigation.
Thanks. Your voice assistant, which is cool. You can give it its own name so
that it'll trigger on whatever keyword you see fit. Charging, so you can
monitor that in a separate place from right here. I mean, I guess for what the
range is, they want you really paying close attention to that. As far as I can
tell, there's no meaningful way to reconfigure what you want your home
screen to be. I didn't notice this. The regenerative braking goes up in sport,
but if you go to custom and configure it, regenerative braking is not one of
the options that they actually allow you to play around with. So, I guess it
would just be driving dynamics. I don't know. Who knows? Uh, I didn't find a
huge difference between comfort and sport in terms of performance or even
suspension. It's pretty it's pretty
floaty, but no more so than I would expect from a people mover. How about
this? Let's try out the assistive driving features. So, I'm going to
switch her over to semi-auto drive assist mode. Uh, okay. So, it's both
lane assist and adaptive cruise control. I'm going to go ahead and set that.
Let's set it to 30 km an hour cuz we're coming up on a school zone. And I
actually really like using cruise control in school zones because what it
means is I never have to pay any attention to anything here. Okay. I can
have my foot covering the brake, right? And then I can just be looking at
absolutely nothing but like what's going on in my peripheral here. Uh I don't
have to think about speed management. Something like that. Yep.
Okay. Oh boy. and we're almost off the
road immediately. Pretty cool. It's been a mixed bag. Sometimes
it was really good, needing basically no intervention for long periods of time.
Um, this one time I took it into a construction zone, though. Doesn't
understand pylons. So, yeah, it's no Tesla autopilot. Also,
where are we going right now, buddy? Where are we going? Are you going to stop? Oh, man. The way that it breaks at
like the last second, I'm pretty sure you can adjust it. Like I think that's
this button like follow distance or something. Oh yeah, there we go. There's
your follow distance button. Okay, never mind. I figured it out. Oh man, I hate
the touch volume control. So you can either swipe like
this or you can like mash this thing on the one side.
Yeah, like the whole thing moves. It's on like a rocker. See
that? What I like more than the volume adjustment though speakers. uh they
partnered with Harman Carden actually and dude it like sounds pretty decent. I
don't know what they did whether it's the tuning or just the fact that it is
so spacious in here compared to a regular car but the sound feels big and
the sound stage is really wide. Um I
think it sounds great. There's an audio one. There we go. Look at that built-in
EQ. I mean seriously, how cool is that?
Are they the best speakers ever? Absolutely not. But my point of
reference here is my minivan. And minivans have had so little competition
here in North America for the last realistically 10 almost 20 years that
having anybody come in and make them a
little better, a little more exciting is exciting for me. As for parking, you
know what? Let's try and get it to do the thing. Searching for parking spaces like do I do I move while I'm searching
for parking? I couldn't get it to do it. Oh, wait. Do we have one? Okay. Hey, it
found one. All right, let's try it. Hey, and if it screws up, it'll hit your car.
Belle, don't hit my car. I love that we're next to Belle's car. Hey, good
luck, Belle's car. Whatever. You don't like driving a Tesla
anyway, do you? Is this going to make it? We're going to We're going to hit the freaking curb.
Oh, here we go. Oh my god, it's doing
it. It's going to go up on the curb. Just We just climbed the curb.
When do I hit the brake here, boys?
Quality job, Volkswagen Group. And I mean, look, okay, that
sample size of one, I'm not saying it wouldn't work a lot of the time, but
I've made my position on autonomous vehicle operation pretty clear if it
doesn't handle edge cases. It ain't autonomous. With that said, I can park
my own car, so I don't really care about that. What I do care about is the price.
Yes, VW is mixing up the minivan market,
but VW is also mixing up the uh minivan
price point a little bit. The ID Buzz cost tens of thousands of dollars more
than competing people movers, which is a pretty tough pill to swallow until you
consider that I don't really think there are competing people movers. At least
not yet and at least not here in North America. Whether you're looking at an
Odyssey or a Sienna, the build quality and the feature richness of those
vehicles just isn't that close. Like
every seat in the ID Buzz feels like I
am driving around in a freaking living room compared to those other vehicles.
So, while I don't love the price, it's not like I'm looking at it going, "Well,
I can't even figure out where they spent this because I 100% can. I just wish
they'd spent a little more on a bigger
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