I’ve been very excited about V0lkswagen’s upcoming electric re-make of their iconic Type 2 Transporter, better known as the Microbus. This could be exactly the car VW needs for their MEB-based line of EVs: A vehicle that leverages on decades of character and identity and that has iconic status right out of the gate. The details are going to be very important on this one, and we’ve finally gotten a peek inside thanks to some leaked images shared on the VW ID Talk forum. It looks pretty good!
VW set the bar really high with the interior they showed in their two-tone, yellow-and-white concept, which was highly reconfigurable and featured a lot of concept car frippery like wooden floors:
The likely close-to-production interior we’re seeing on the rainbow-camo-wrapped preproduction test bus (we’ve seen that one around before) features much more likely materials, but I’m happy to say still manages to feel fun and airy and not exactly like everything else out there, qualities that will be crucial to the ID Buzz’s success.
Let’s look at what we’ve got here:
The cockpit seems to share the same instrument binnacle and fun play/pause pedals as the ID.4, which is fine by me, as I found them to be well designed and useful. Besides, the original VW Bus used instruments and pedals that were really similar to the Beetle, so there’s a precedent here.
The door cards seem to have orange-ish inserts, which looks to match the orange of the body colour (you can see it in the lower left there) which is fun, and I expect that this would change based on the exterior colour?
Looks like a lot of room there, as you’d expect from a tall, vertical van.
The two-tone seats are white and, again, a sort of peachy colour, which is also likely to match the two-tone look I’d expect VW would offer, as they did on the classic vans and still offer on their modern Transporters: white top, colour below the beltline.
Here, let’s look at the seats from another angle:
VW is really leaning into that ID. branding, as you can see. Those seats look pretty good, with that isometric Tetris kind of quilted pattern there, and all the white upholstery keeps the inside feeling open and bright.
The middle row looks to be a bench seat that can do a 60/40 split, and it appears that when folded, the rear is able to have an upper floor panel that allows for a big, flat loading surface with storage underneath.
The front seatbacks seems to have airline-style fold down trays, which is nice, and those seem to have an integrated cupholder. I’d expect USB outlets are back there somewhere as well.
There’s also a little side profile of the Bus cast into the side plastic panel of the seat, which is a nice touch.
The rear on this one doesn’t appear to have a third row, but I can’t imagine one wouldn’t be available. In fact, you can see armrests on the sides there, in orange, even.
There’s a cargo cover (retracted) and that upper floor area support thing in place. There looks to be a 12V outlet and another little panel back there (lights? USB?) and a larger panel below that seems removable.
Overall, I think VW is doing a pretty good job with this, considering the constraints of mass production and what mainstream buyers are likely to demand.
While I’m not crazy about the needlessly pissed-off looking headlights, I think the overall ID.Buzz design is pretty strong, and with the right two-tone paint scheme I think it could evoke the right level of nostalgia and charm to make these a success.
I’m eager to see the final ones, free of all the camo and whatnot.
Don’t screw this up, VW!