- 3 months ago
Join us as Ben McKimm takes a closer look at the 2025 Volkswagen ID. Buzz Pro. This all-electric people-mover blends retro charm with modern tech. In this walkaround, we explore its standout design, spacious interior, and key features that make it one of the most exciting EVs on the market.
🔋 Electric power meets classic VW heritage
💺 Spacious, comfortable, and loaded with tech
💡 Our first impressions of this futuristic people mover
Is the ID. Buzz Pro the ultimate blend of nostalgia and innov
🔋 Electric power meets classic VW heritage
💺 Spacious, comfortable, and loaded with tech
💡 Our first impressions of this futuristic people mover
Is the ID. Buzz Pro the ultimate blend of nostalgia and innov
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00So here at the launch of the Volkswagen ID Buzz, which has to be one of the most exciting EV
00:05releases
00:05of the year, and probably one of the most exciting car releases of the year, for me,
00:11because I have a lot of nostalgia with this vehicle, with the original T1, with combi vans
00:15in general, but I think that's true for so many Australians. I thought, why not pick up the camera
00:20for a few minutes and give you guys a little bit of walk around of this short wheelbase model.
00:2387,990, that's the price in Australia, but you can definitely option these things up. Some of the
00:28interior stuff costs quite a little bit, but I'm going to give you guys a bit of a walk around
00:31now.
00:32And I think you'll agree that the design of this thing is spot on. They've absolutely nailed it.
00:37Look at the size of the Volkswagen emblem here. Matrix LED headlights here. They've basically
00:43added all the tech that you expect on a modern car, a modern EV particularly, onto these things.
00:49And most of it's standard, but there are a lot of options, including these 21-inch wheels. You get
00:5619s as standard, two-tone paint, but it is a pretty epic looking thing, I reckon.
01:02Let me show you the back of the car, then we'll jump into the inside and I'll show you some
01:05of the
01:05tech at the front. So we've got another massive Volkswagen emblem here at the back.
01:10Electronic tailgate. And then even in the short wheelbase model, you get all this storage.
01:15It would have been nice to see some automatic seat retraction here, but you can pull up the third
01:20row with these straps. Then obviously in the back here, we've also got USB-C ports, cup holders,
01:27places to put your iPad or your phone. You've got a 12-volt socket for fridges, even a little
01:33grocery hook. And of course, if you want more storage, you can jump to that orange one over
01:39there, which you can see in the distance. That is the long wheelbase. It's a 7-seater for the
01:44charging flaps on the right-hand side of the back, which isn't too bad. You've got your DC port here
01:49as well. I'm sure you can pull out. 185 kilowatts on the DC port, which is good for a 5
01:56-80% in about
01:5730 minutes. Look, it's not the fastest car to charge. We've actually waited a long time for this car in
02:03Australia, and some cars have moved forward a little bit quicker than this, I think, but it's a novelty car.
02:09It does have practicality, but at the end of the day, you're buying it because of its sort of statement
02:13looks more so than you are. It's a cutting-edge tank. I reckon while we're back here, I shot the
02:18roof.
02:19I'm going to jump into the third row. We'll start in the third row and see how that goes.
02:23Jump back here. Check the space. I'm going to need two hands for this. Space back here in the third
02:33row.
02:33is incredible. Look how much legroom I have. You get air vents back here above your head,
02:39little coat hooks, and even with this panoramic glass roof, you've got plenty of visibility,
02:45which is nice, so you don't get too motion sick back here. We'll jump into the second row. It's a
02:49two-hand job to get back into the second row. It's a pretty hefty seat, I have to say. Not
02:54sure about
02:55this fabric. There is an optional Sequel fabric, which is nearly seven grand. Tray table. There we go.
03:04A little plasticky. Overall, I'm pretty impressed. There's a little button down here to shut the door.
03:11It's pretty quick. It's not too bad. You don't want to take too long at the school drop-off,
03:15so you need a quick door. I like this pull tab here. I like more coat hooks. I don't know
03:20if this is
03:21like a German thing. Well, they have so many coat hooks. I don't think I've ever used one, but
03:24fan speed control up here. A little light. Touch sensitive, clearly. More air vents. You get that massive
03:32panoramic glass roof. This car is obviously highly spec'd. You've got Harman Kardon audio here.
03:37But yeah, it's a really nice place to sit. I want to know what it's like to drive though,
03:41so we're going to do that soon. I'm just going to show you the front.
03:44Size of the front door. It's actually pretty lightweight, which is good. It's beeping at me, but
03:51step up. You're definitely in a van when you're driving an ID Buzz, but there is... it doesn't
03:58have that cliff drop-off in front of you, I'll show you. Sometimes in vans, you're sitting right
04:02over the front wheels, but you're actually sitting behind the wheels in the ID Buzz. You won't be able
04:07to see down there. But if I didn't tell you this was a van, you might think I'm sitting in
04:11a Golf,
04:12to be honest. You have similar touch screen, similar wheel, a nice little digital driver's
04:17display, which I actually kind of like the size of it. It's not too big, not too small.
04:21In terms of tech, 12.9 inch touch screen, Android Auto, Apple CarPlay, all the usual jazz.
04:28Those are the apps. Classic automotive journalist snap test by just swiping the screen and that tells
04:33you absolutely nothing. Heated seats in this car, and then you've got these touch sliders, which
04:39everyone's sort of talked about. Every journalist on earth hates these things, but I actually don't
04:43mind them too much. This car stands out though for all this storage. Look at the passenger side here.
04:48You've got a massive bin where you just gotta shove your phone, basically. Cup holders down here.
04:54This thing is the ID Buzz box. You can actually remove, so if I press that button, the whole thing
05:00comes out. Then you gotta try and find the hooks to put it back in, but quite cool. There's the
05:05overall
05:05driving position, which is pretty good. I mentioned all the USB-C ports. Everything feels pretty high
05:11quality. I know, I think this one's pretty highly specified. If I can find a lower spec car, I'd love
05:16to show you guys, but that's not how they do press launches, so I like it. It's a cool place
05:20to sit,
05:21but the only thing I haven't done is take it for a drive, so why don't we go and take
05:25it for a quick spin.
05:26So I've been driving the ID Buzz long wheelbase now for about five minutes. We're just on our way out
05:31of
05:31Newcastle, and I have to say, it's pretty darn good. In terms of around town, it's as comfortable
05:36as you would expect pretty much any EV to be. Effortless power. It's quite interesting though
05:42in this car, because it is essentially a giant square or rectangular box with wheels at each corner,
05:48and it is quite challenging for car manufacturers to engineer out some of the stiffness that can be found
05:54in the batteries, because having a massive battery the length of the floor of the car
05:58does add a lot of stiffness, and it is a structural element of these cars.
06:02So then when you attach suspension to it and wheels, it can be quite hard to
06:05get the car to sort of work with the body of the car, work with the battery. A lot of
06:10the cheaper
06:10EVs on the market really struggle with it, but I have to say, Volkswagen, all things considered,
06:15this is a van at the end of the day, has done a pretty good job with it. I would
06:19like some of the
06:20materials in the cabin to be a little bit nicer if I was daily driving it. So you might want
06:26to think
06:26about factoring in that upgraded interior, but it is six and a half grand, so it adds a massive
06:31price to this car, which is already not particularly cheap. Range so far, we've got the big battery in
06:37this one, so 90% range here indicated, so 90% battery indicated here, 500 kilometers of range,
06:44and we are so far using 29.2 kilowatt hours per 100 kilometers, so that's quite thirsty.
06:52And then in terms of power, you have more than enough on tap. There's 210 kilowatts of power in
06:58this long wheelbase, it's in the shortbase, in the cargo, it's the same across the entire model lineup.
07:02It's nice to standardize it, and it's more than enough. Even this would be, at a guess, one of the
07:07heavy models being the long wheelbase with the biggest battery. So the fact that it's effortless in
07:11this, it was effortless in the cargo. We were towing around 500 kilos of payload earlier in the day,
07:16and that was a breeze. It's amazing what having no gearbox and no internal combustion engine can do
07:24to a car. It could really make these cars drive a lot nicer than they maybe would have with an
07:29engine and gearbox, because they're so linear, they're so smooth, the power's on tap as soon as
07:33you hit that accelerator pedal. If you want more, they are bringing out a IDBuzz GTX, which is sort of
07:39the
07:39GTI name play that's being given to the Volkswagen electric cars, but I don't see why you wouldn't need
07:45much more than this. It has plenty of up and go. If I had to critique one little thing, it
07:49would be
07:49there's not enough regenerative braking, so there is a B mode. So you can have D and then it'll just
07:54coast like a normal car, or you can flick it over into B mode, which I really like when you're
07:58driving
07:58around town, because every time you let your foot off the accelerator pedal, it brakes for you or
08:02regenerates using the electric motors, but it's just not quite strong enough. I've found this in
08:06general in Volkswagen group cars, but including Audis, RS e-trons, everything like that, they're just never
08:11particularly strong on the region. So we're just getting onto some better roads now. I'll give you
08:17a few impressions about how this thing drives down a scenic route. So far, to summarize the freeway,
08:25I averaged around 23.5, 23.7 kilowatt hours per hundred kilometers, which is not amazing,
08:36but when you consider this thing is essentially a box with a wheel, it's not too bad at all.
08:39It's kind of about what you'd get in your Audi Q8 e-tron, similar sort of situation, but they're
08:45dual motor setups. But yeah, I mean, it's not outstanding on the freeway, but what do you expect
08:51for a big box? Comfort-wise though, really good. On smoother tarmac, the cabin noise is quite good,
08:58but then when you get to that rougher sort of coarse chip tarmac, that's when the cabin noise starts to
09:02creep up a little bit. So it is a little bit finicky to find your drive modes. There is an
09:07Eco mode,
09:08a comfort mode, sport, and an individual mode, which you can calibrate yourself.
09:12I'm trying to find a shortcut button in the car, but I can't find it. Let me know in the
09:16comments
09:16if you know where there's a shortcut button. But you basically have to go to the main screen,
09:19hit the car mode button, and then you can select it. So we put it across into sport mode now.
09:24Instantly, the car wants to sort of roll forward a little bit more, the accelerator pedal's
09:28a little bit more spiky, a little bit more jabby, which is a really poor way to describe it,
09:34but it's just more there when you need it. Yeah, so just doing normal sort of B-road speeds on
09:39this
09:40stretch of road. And yeah, there's a little bit of body roll, but it's pretty well managed.
09:46You sort of tip the thing in, and then it just kind of leans over a little bit, and it's
09:49sort of set,
09:51and you don't need to provide too much further inputs once you've got it set.
09:55But if the benchmark for me is a Lexus LM, this is 75% of the way there, which is
10:03a big credit to
10:04this car because it's significantly better than a lot of other commercial vans that I've driven,
10:09or a lot of other vans in general, people movers, people carriers. It's a lot better. LM though,
10:18that's a $150,000 plus vehicle, so it's hard to compare it to that, but that is my most recent
10:23experience with a people mover. Really quite impressed. It's quite a fun car to drive, I have
10:29to say. See how it goes through here. Yeah, it just does it. I'm not pushing it to the limits
10:35by any
10:35means. We're on public roads, but I reckon you could have some fun driving this car, which can be said
10:41for a lot of wheel drive cars, but it picks up speed really well. Very enjoyable car to drive.
10:51All right, so that's it for the ID Buzz. Just a quick first impressions of the car. You guys let
10:57me know what you think of it. Please hit the like button, hit the subscribe button, hit all the good
11:00things. We're just trying to do more of these videos, so if you like this video, let us know in
11:03the comments
11:03as well. ID Buzz. How cool is it?