Volkswagen ID Buzz first drive

The wheelbase is just shy of three metres long, and long it is, which allows for a wheel-in-each-corner design that really gives the ID Buzz a hunkered-down presence.

The cabin is full of clever little cubbyholes and places to store (lose) the contents of your pockets, and you will never be short of a place to charge your phone, because up to eight USB-C ports are offered.

The fun outside gives way to a more functional inside, yet it’s still a bright and cheery place for all occupants to enjoy, particularly in the light colour scheme of our Style test car. Lots of recycled materials are used for the trim, and there’s no real leather in here – a first for a Volkswagen in modern times.

The layout is typically VW – simple in design with a driver’s screen for vital functions and a larger central screen for almost everything else. Most controls are operated via the central screen or by switchgear either on the twin steering wheel spokes or on a couple of overcrowded steering wheel stalks. The complication is due to the fact that the right-hand stalk, formerly a simple wiper control, is now used for the 'PRND' transmission selection functions, which means wiper operation has to migrate to the left-hand stalk. You get used to it, but the layout of previous VW models is better.

It’s a very spacious interior, notably for front passengers, with the absence of a transmission tunnel allowing for a game of footsie with your co-pilot. If you can reach them, that is: such is the width that you do feel like you’re sitting quite a way from your front passenger. The windscreen also seems miles away.

Volkswagen’s infamous infotainment system features, running the latest 3.2 software that new Volkswagen CEO Thomas Schäfer promises is far more secure and stable than previous iterations. He also admits that it’s not as user-friendly as it should be, which is putting it mildly.

‘Why press one button or go through one menu when you could go through many, many more?’ seems to be the mantra behind it, the kind of software that’s designed in a lab with no real thought or testing into how such complexity manifests itself when you have to do something else at the same time; like focusing on driving and not crashing, for instance.

Bafflingly, the digital heater controls on the centre console still aren’t backlit, so trying to turn the heater up or down at night is quite literally a stab in the dark. Things quickly improve, though, when you get onto the business of driving the ID Buzz, which is all very enjoyable.

Electric power suits a car of this size and brief so well, the quietness and refinement, in particular, a real boon. The driving experience will be familiar from any of the growing number of MEB-based cars from Volkswagen, Audi, Cupra and Skoda, delivering brisk but not hair-raising acceleration, and well-judged regenerative braking for more one-pedal driving in the ‘B’ driving mode, selected from the column gear selector. It can still provide a good surge forwards when needed, though, with enough torque on tap even higher up the rev range. 

The steering is nicely weighted and precise in its operation, and it undoubtedly feels like that of a car, rather than a van. That latter point goes for the handling, too, the ID Buzz proving itself a surprisingly adept performer through the corners, with far less body roll than you would expect, thanks to the low centre of gravity afforded by the battery pack mounting.

Manoeuvrability is great, too, the turning circle just 11.1 metres thanks to the rear-motor, rear-wheel-drive layout. It also rides nicely, with a multi-link rear suspension as standard. There are no major disturbances from bumps in the road, although it’s a little soft and wallowy on the motorway, and there’s some wind noise (still, at 0.29, the drag coefficient is surprisingly low).

On UK roads, the Buzz feels in some ways remarkably like VW's well-established dynamic model for a medium-sized commercial. The steering effort, gearing and the stabilising understeer built into the Buzz’s chassis are all quite familiar, as is the overall effort and retardation of the brakes - though the Buzz has plenty of brake pedal travel, and a detectable step between the regen and friction phases of braking.

But in other ways the ID Buzz is a long step ahead of its combustion-engined predecessors. Its ride is impressively composed and quiet over high-frequency ripples. Its chassis has a feeling of tautness, damping is fairly impressive and – better still – the cabin is as quiet as a good saloon's over coarse surfaces. Only when pressed over roads with big, long-wave bumps does the suspension begin to lose composure, and even here it does pretty well.