The VW ID Buzz: six months and eight thousand miles later

In December of 2025, I found a used 2025 VW ID Buzz in Texas that was selling for a great price, so I flew down, bought it, and drove it back.

The long road trip was a great introduction to the vehicle and now that it's been in our garage for six months, we've put another 8,000 miles on it. It's driven daily by my spouse to and from her work, which is about five miles away, but I still get the chance to drive it several times a week when we go anywhere together.

A lot of friends have asked us if we still like it several months later, so I wanted to share a longer term review now that we've lived with it for half a year.

What's still great

The visibility is amazing in it, and it feels like you're driving around in a giant phone booth, but in a good way. Normally in other vans I've driven, sometimes a very large windshield makes it feel like the world is going by too slowly even when you're pushing 75mph but the Buzz doesn't have that giant windshield effect. It feels like a car with a high seating position, surrounded by windows everywhere. It's really easy to drive because of this.

The white interior looks incredible and somehow lifts my spirits any time I'm behind the wheel. I have never driven a car with a light-colored interior but the white leather and fun orange accents combine to make it feel fun and fresh, even months later. I don't think I'll ever get tired of how cool the interior looks and feels when you first get into it.

The car emits joy wherever it goes. People smile at you, wave, and give a tiny honk when they see you. EVERYONE wants to ask what it drives like and what you think of it whenever they see you in a parking lot. I've given dozens of little five minute tours of the car to strangers who wanted to see inside.

There's also an interaction I've become familiar with, and it's when you're inside a store and an older person locks eyes with you across the aisle, breaks into a big smile, then walks directly towards you to ask Do you love your VW Buzz? And did you know their very first car was a 1964 VW bus in red and black? It happens almost weekly, as boomers come out of the woodwork to chat you up about the car.

It's been a great car so far, and it's really huge inside. It's probably bigger than we need, but it's good to have the extra space. I have picked up six people at the airport and successfully and comfortably gotten them home.

Everyone, myself included, was worried about the smaller EV range on the VW Buzz, but after six months of driving it daily all over Oregon, we've only used a public charger once when we had a 250+ mile round trip to an event. While it's on the shorter side of drivable range compared to most EVs its size, almost every trip we've ever taken where we spent a day running errands ended up being about 100 miles total, so it's been totally fine and easy to live with.

Also remember that from the very first trip I learned it was possible to trek across America for several thousand miles without any plans, and it all worked out. After living with it for six months, I think the range anxiety in this vehicle is overblown. Like other EVs, it's perfectly fine for 99% of anyone's regular driving, and even if you want to take a longer road trip, it's doable.

Another thing I was worried about was the center screen/entertainment system because I'd heard horror stories about the VW ID.4 EV car this was based on. I'd even met an ID.4 owner who hated her car because the screen was always crashing while driving it. But I can say after six months, whatever updates VW did to the hardware and software have made the center dash screen totally reliable.

The MyVW mobile app doesn't offer a ton of options but you can start the AC or heater before you get to the car and it does a reasonable job locating where you last parked it.

What's still confusing

There are very few downsides to the Buzz after living with it for half a year.

I still hate the capacitive touch buttons on the steering wheel and in the center display. About once a week, I'll hear a thump sound that tells me one of the buttons was pushed, but it's while I'm driving and I have no idea what got accidentally tapped. Thankfully, it's rare but real switches and buttons that don't accidentally click when you merely hover over them would solve this forever, and I've heard rumors the next version of this car will remove capacitive buttons, which is great to hear.

Relatedly, I dislike how the window controls toggle between the front and back windows via a capacitive button that I accidentally touch almost every time I go to roll down the front windows (and once pressed, it rolls down the rear windows). I don't understand why VW decided to try weird new features on this car when they'd already been making doors with four window switches for half a century.

I set up wireless CarPlay on my phone in this car, but I usually use a USB-c cable to charge my phone from its main port. When connected via a cable, I can never tell when the Buzz will join CarPlay using that cable or instead go wirelessly which is a bit weird (when you're wireless connected, hitting pause or forward has a noticeable delay of a second but wired connections are instant).

I bought a $200 generic EV charger on Amazon for our garage and we've found that its charger head gets stuck in the charge port sometimes and is tough to remove unless you angle the handle just so while hitting the release button. I don't think this has anything to do with VW's plug design and is likely our cheap charger cable being a little wonky.

I briefly tested out VW's in-car WiFi feature where it uses a Verizon 5G connection to provide WiFi for everyone inside. But since our phones are already on Verizon, it doesn't give you any upside for $20/mo as the network speeds match that of our existing phone connections.

What I hope changes in the future

A slightly longer EV range would have been nice, but on the flip side, I also wish the US market got the shorter wheelbase version they sell in Europe as an option because it just looks a bit more sleek and you don't always need six or seven seats inside.

The capacitive touch buttons really are not great and if there's ever a community-driven way to swap steering wheels to non-capacitive versions with clicky buttons, I'd be first in line to buy one.

VW released news that there won't be a 2026 model of the Buzz, but it may come back as a 2027 model next year. If it does return, I hope they revisit their pricing for the entire line. The fully outfitted, all-the-options VW Buzz feels great if you can buy it for $50,000 but the First Edition launched at $72k+ which was a ridiculously high number. I know inflation sucks now and tariffs are a pain, but no version of the VW ID Buzz should cost over $60k.

The verdict

The VW Buzz has surprised me in that besides its annoying buttons, everything else about it is close to perfect. It's fun to drive and has the peppy torque that every EV has, making it feels fast for its size. The interior design, seating position, and view out of the windows is superb and makes it easy to drive anywhere. While longer trips might take a bit of planning on your phone, our public charging needs are so rare that it hasn't been a problem at all.

One of the biggest indicators that this is a well-designed car is that I haven't modified it yet, nor do I see the need. This is almost never happens with me, because I'm the type of person that upgrades speakers or changes wheels and tires the moment I get a car home from a dealer. Almost everything I drive is highly modified in a few ways, but I have almost zero desire to change anything about the Buzz.

To date, I've only 3D printed myself a better cup holder for the center console and a wireless charging mount that clicks into the dash. Everything else is untouched.

So that's the story. It's a super fun car, hasn't gotten old, strikes up conversations with strangers wherever we go, and is a joy to drive. If it was cheaper, I bet VW would have sold a ton of them. Even though they "canceled" the next model year of this car, you can still find plenty of First Edition VW ID.Buzz models right around $50k, some still even brand new. If you're curious, give one a test drive, then seek out the best deal you can.

We don't regret anything about this purchase and I bet we'll have this car for the next ten years (my spouse typically drives the same car for 15-20 years at a time), and I strongly suspect it'll be just as fun to get in and drive it then as it is now.