2024 VW ID.Buzz ahead: electric bus debuts on March 9
Volkswagen has once again teased a production version of the ID.Buzz concept, first unveiled in 2017.
Now the electric VW Bus has reached its doomed day. On Monday, Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess announced on Twitter that Volkswagen will unveil its electric van on March 9, 2022.
The vehicle, whose name has yet to be announced, is best described as the spiritual successor to the iconic microbus (which actually has a direct successor in the form of the Transporter/Multivan line sold abroad) and will debut in 2022; VW's latest teaser claims that a reveal is imminent, so it will happen early in the new year.
However, it won't reach the U.S. until sometime in 2023; VW has confirmed that it will arrive in the U.S. as a 2024 model.
The camouflage pattern used in the teaser is very close to the scheme used when the ID.5 and related ID.4 were teased. Since the production versions of these vehicles changed little from the camouflage version shown in the teaser, this seems to be a good indication of what the production ID.Buzz will look like.
Indeed, the production version looks quite different from the concept we saw in 2017, but it closely matches the details seen in spy shots of the test vehicle and its styling cues match other members of VW's expanding family of ID vehicles. The production ID.Buzz will use the same MEB platform as the ID.4, ID.5, and the Audi Q4 E-Tron and ID.3 hatchbacks sold overseas.
We also know that both passenger and cargo versions are planned, the latter heralded by the ID.Buzz Cargo concept in 2018.VW also plans to use a production ID.Buzz in a self-driving cab service to be launched in Germany in 2025. Buzz; VW released a sketch of the self-driving van earlier this year and announced that testing would begin a few months later. The service will be operated by the VW Group's Moia mobility division and will use an autonomous driving system developed by Argo AI, in which the Volkswagen Group is a major shareholder.