Volkswagen ID. Buzz review

Prices for the five-seater open at £60,005. The six-seater is £60,160, the seven-seater £60,530. That’s all in base Life trim. Climbing up to Style trim will set you back around £4,875 extra.

The GTX begins from £68,530 (and again is available as a five-, six- or seven-seater), while the Cargo version costs from £39,205 (including the discount from plug-in vehicle grant - kerching). 

A base Buzz, with a £10,000 deposit, will cost you £520 a month over four years, with an optional £25k final payment, meaning you’d have paid £4,000 more on finance than if you’d bought it outright. It’ll pay to shop around.

Or you could have a Kia PV5 for half the price. Seriously, we've not made that up. That means you’re looking at around half the money on lease too, which is a whole lot easier to stomach.

Let’s say I’m set on the Buzz… what’s the difference between kit?

Right, in Life trim you get 19in alloys, heated windscreen, washers and steering wheel, VW’s latest 12.9in infotainment setup with wireless smartphone pairing, 10-colour ambient lighting, front, side and rear cameras, a removable centre console, powered tailgate, adaptive cruise control and the usual driver assist gizmos.

Style trim adds 20in alloys, LED matrix headlights, electric sliding doors and second row windows, play and pause stainless steel pedals, dual armrests for driver and front passenger, 30-colour ambient lighting, footwell lighting, a head-up display, and a Harmon Kardon sound system. Very nice indeed.

Top trim GTX introduces the second electric motor for all-wheel drive, 21in alloy wheels, a slightly tweaked grille design, electrically dimmable power roof, black roofliner, red stitching and GTX badging throughout.

Where would you spend your money?

Are we allowed to say 'on a Kia PV5'? No? OK then, if you’ve decided on a Buzz we reckon you’re best off in Style trim in six- or seven-seater LWB guise. You don’t need the dual motor GTX here.

All jokes aside, tell us you wouldn’t feel happier stepping outside and seeing this on your drive every morning than, say a Tesla? That the kids would have more fun in this, that journeys would be more enjoyable as a result?

And beyond the financials, doesn’t the Buzz look like a brighter, cleverer solution for the future? We’ve said this before, but could the ID.Buzz signal the start of the SUV’s demise? Could it kickstart an automotive revolution in the same way as the original Renault Espace? 

It’s less pretentious, less aggressive and better at delivering the greatest luxury you can have in a family car – space. The electric age needs a new shape, a new style and here it is. Now it just needs to be (a lot) cheaper.