Volkswagen ID.Buzz - long-term review

The gauntlet has been laid. By myself, for myself, for no particular reason other than I’d quite like to avoid queuing at a charger in a French service station: can the VW ID.Buzz GTX make it from Sussex to our holiday digs in St Denis le Gast, Normandy, on a single charge – with a little assistance from a cross-channel ferry? A nail-biter, I know. 

Some numbers – from our house to the Newhaven ferry port is a very gentle 22 miles. Then from Dieppe to the house is a further 172 miles, for a total of 192. Comfortably within the claimed WLTP range of 280, a mere 2.26mpkWh required. But here’s the reality of road-tripping an EV, especially one with the aerodynamics of a cheese sandwich that weighs almost three tonnes: at motorway speeds (especially French motorways with their far more reasonable 80mph cap) your efficiency plummets.

And because most sane people don’t tend to run their EVs to below 20 per cent, let alone 10 per cent, before getting twitchy and replenishing the cells, you can see what a farce a WLTP figure really is. Halfway there our predicted range is lagging distance still to cover… time to deploy captain featherfoot. I drop the speed to 65mph, internalise the shame and cruise up to the house (there’s a home charger) with three per cent battery left and a huge sense of satisfaction. My family don’t appear to have noticed my heroics. Or care.

Some notes from the drive down and our time in France. Unless you have an allergy to contraception and need the second-row bench, two individual seats are far superior. It keeps the physical violence to a minimum, makes the rear infinitely more accessible, and with the third-row folded you have a shipping container of space in which to overpack. Last year we did an even longer French road trip in a used Telsa Model 3… this year we could have parked one in the back.

The flush rear windows are brilliantly over engineered, and a little too tempting for my youngest to play with constantly, all the cup holders, charging sockets and floor space feels not just useful but essential on a big trip (#vanlife), although I do miss the fridge in the armrest from the Defender 130. I realise this is a first world problem.

What sticks with me most, though, out of all the multi-generational jaunts to the beach, 0-60mph launches to keep the kids entertained and tip runs, is this is a car that just makes people smile. Don’t think I’ve driven past another Buzz without receiving a wave. Yes, I wave back. Sounds vomit-inducing, actually warms the cockles. Driving a car, any car, should be a joyful experience and the Buzz puts that front and centre.