{"id":1758093,"date":"2026-02-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1758093"},"modified":"2026-02-05T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T21:00:00","slug":"volkswagen-id-buzz-long-term-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1758093","title":{"rendered":"Volkswagen ID.Buzz – long-term review"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Don\u2019t tell Ferrari\/Bentley\/Rolls customers forking out tens of thousands for carbon-fibre umbrellas and extra-leathery gloveboxes, but time is luxury apparently, not expensive stuff. Rubbish, I say, for I have lived seven glorious months with the extended-wheelbase ID. Buzz and can confirm luxury is in fact\u2026 space.<\/p>\n

It buys you everything. The ability to make plans on the fly and take vast numbers of family and friends with you. It lets you rid the house of unsightly cardboard boxes and piles of garden waste when you\u2019ve got guests on the way \u2013 simply lob them in the skip-on-wheels parked outside. It saves you the stress of deciding what\u2019s worth packing and what\u2019s not, thus avoiding roughly six domestics per annum.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Usually space comes with compromise. Buy a traditional van and it\u2019s not particularly wieldy for popping to the shops in, or dropping the kids at school. But the Buzz counters that by being electric, fast, responsive and highly manoeuvrable. So you end up using it, as I did, for everything from solo shuttle runs to the gym, to family holidays in France.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the car every videographer and photographer wants on a photo shoot \u2013 huge slab-like front and rear surfaces to mount cameras on, sliding side doors to hang out of for the hero low-profile angle, and it swallows everything – people and kit \u2013 and stands a chance of keeping up with some of the fruitier stuff we shoot.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s got character \u2013 the kids love it and our neighbours smile and wave, assuming we\u2019re off on some adventure when really we\u2019re off to collect fish and chips. Even the roundly despised VW infotainment system wasn\u2019t an issue, given it connected immediately to CarPlay and that\u2019s all I ever use \u2013 although moving or tilting the screen towards the driver wouldn\u2019t go amiss.<\/p>\n

I loved the heated wheel and seats, twin armrests in the front, high seating position and view out, 360 cameras and stubby front overhang so you can squeeze right up into parking spaces with confidence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Issues? It\u2019s a lot of money for what feels like a well-kitted, but straightforward car. You\u2019re paying for personality in other words, a fact that\u2019s only highlighted by the shockingly cheap Kia PV5 arriving on the scene. Range is a learning curve. VW claims 280-miles, and that\u2019s plenty for bombing about locally, and my West Sussex to West London commute (with a third of the battery to spare). But the efficiency drop off at motorway speeds is stark \u2013 you can thank the laws of aerodynamics for that \u2013 which means if you\u2019re on a road trip and don\u2019t want to drive at 65mph in the crawler lane, budget to stop every 150-miles for a top up.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Put simply, the Buzz is my kind of car (since I\u2019ve had two kids anyway) \u2013 unflinchingly practical, but with something about it. I\u2019ve never run dry of things to talk about, it\u2019s risen to every challenge and become a solid sixth member of the family (we have a cat \u2013 Bluey, we like to keep our pets on BBC brand). Handing this one back is going to sting\u2026 anyone got Kia\u2019s number?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Don\u2019t tell Ferrari\/Bentley\/Rolls customers forking out tens of thousands for carbon-fibre umbrellas and extra-leathery gloveboxes, but time is luxury apparently, not expensive stuff. Rubbish, I say, for I have lived seven glorious months with the extended-wheelbase ID. Buzz and can confirm luxury is in fact\u2026 space. It buys you everything. The ability to make plans […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,237],"class_list":["post-1758093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-topgear-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1758093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1758093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1758093\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1758093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1758093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1758093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}