First drive in VW's long-awaited electric Microbus homage

Who remembers when Volkswagen first put forward the idea of a 21^st century Microbus?

Not many, we’ll wager, as it was a very long time ago. The good news is that Volkswagen has finally decided to build it. The not so good news is that you’re still going have to wait until 2022 to see it in showrooms.

Back in the good news zone, VW is obviously going to put plenty of development effort into it because, a full five years ahead of launch, they’ve built a road-legal ID Buzz concept – and we’ve driven it in its spiritual home, the sun-kissed Californian coast. Well, somebody had to.

Getting into the ID Buzz involves waving your hand inside the side swage line to activate the conventionally front-hinged driver’s door. The interior is beautifully minimalist and spacious, albeit with quite a high floor to accommodate the battery pack and crash protection structure.

A small step in the sill helps you to climb up into the driver’s seat, which is high and well forward. That gives a great view of the road, and the potential for up to eight passengers in a multi-layout interior with a completely flat floor and two luggage compartments front and rear.

Old Microbus owners will nod in appreciation of the ‘quarter-light’ windows. There are no controls on the full-width dashboard. Every function, from gear selection to indicators, is located on the rectangular steering wheel.

Two 201bhp electric motors, one front and one rear, provide four-wheel drive capability and a limited combined output of 369bhp that we can expect to see on higher-spec models at launch. There’ll be long and short-wheelbase versions, and RWD-only models too with a single 268bhp electric motor. That’s the configuration we’re working with today.

A single finger-swipe on the touch-sensitive steering wheel readies the ID Buzz for action. The big 111 kWh capacity of the lithium-ion battery is claimed to give the ID Buzz a zero-emissions range of up to 372 miles, but quite a few others have been trying out this unique concept already this morning so there are some furrowed brows concerning the amount of ‘juice’ that might remain in the ‘tank’. Info will eventually be presented via an augmented reality head-up windscreen display unit, but right now it’s not active, so we’re limited to some short runs along Monterey’s impossibly scenic 17 Mile Drive.

Despite weighing the best part of 2000kg, the ID Buzz feels very lively when D is selected and the throttle squeezed, even in single-motor spec. Cruising speeds are quickly and easily reached, with an efficiency-maximising freewheel coasting function disengaging the motor until you get back onto the throttle. Unusually, there’s no typical e-motor whine.

When it’s fitted with whatever autonomous driving technology is available at the time of launch, the ID Buzz will have a steering wheel that will drop back into the dashboard and a driver’s seat that can be rotated through 180 degrees.