Don’t Let the Volkswagen ID Buzz Get Your Hopes Up for an Electrical Beetle

We’ve acquired dangerous information for these hoping for a second revival of the Volkswagen Beetle. In a current interview, VW CEO Thomas Schäfer referred to as it a “useless finish.” Ouch. 

Throughout a current check drive occasion of the upcoming Tiguan, the chief govt spoke to Autocar about which legacy nameplates can be carried over into the automaker’s aggressive electrified automobile plans. “We’ve determined we’re not going to throw away the standard, profitable names which have carried us for therefore lengthy, that we’ve invested in for therefore lengthy, like Golf and Tiguan. Why would you allow them to go?” Schäfer contemplated.  

Volkswagen is at the moment focusing on to have 80% of electrical automobile gross sales in Europe coming from a model throughout the VW group, and desires to personal 55% of EV gross sales within the U.S. by 2030. This can be a technique lengthy within the making, with a considerable funding in manufacturing facility growth and retooling to accommodate the brand new EV fashions Volkswagen is aiming to roll out. You might recall {that a} handful of years in the past, Volkswagen was on the coronary heart of an enormous scandal during which it was, in a nutshell, caught dishonest on diesel automobile emissions checks. The huge fallout and extra stringent emission requirements in Europe prompted VW to make an enormous pivot to electrification. 

That brings us up to the mark the place we’ve new electrical V-Dubs just like the ID.4 crossover and the ID Buzz, a retro revival of the well-known Volkswagen Microbus — or Kombi…or “hippie van,” relying on the place and while you encountered it. The U.S. model of the ‘Buzz has three rows of seats and between 282 to 330 horsepower relying on if it’s rear-or-all-wheel drive, and nets about 260 miles of vary. It’s a automobile lengthy within the making, with an idea teasing some type of manufacturing mannequin since 2017. Naturally, this has triggered many to surprise in regards to the destiny of the O.G. retro-revival, the Beetle. 

Just like the Microbus, the Beetle has achieved its personal legendary standing all through the years and has change into adored, regardless of its sophisticated origins. On our aspect of the pond, it turned simply as symbolic to Sixties counterculture because the Microbus. As such, it was fairly the massive deal when Volkswagen launched the New Beetle in 1997. Its reputation kicked off an period of all kinds of “retrofuturistic” revivals that embrace the fifth-generation Ford Mustang, the 2006 Toyota FJ Cruiser, and the retro-styled Chrysler PT Cruiser.

The brand new Bug had a stable run till 2010 when it ceased manufacturing. It was a mixture of VW switching its manufacturing to a brand new modular platform for its automobiles to share and in addition that Bug fever has run its course. Within the late 90s, all of us had rose-tinted recollections of the Beetle, and its return scratched a selected itch on the time, however shortly thereafter, the next glut of Beetles in all places and the satisfaction of that individual nostalgic urge left us with simply one other hatchback that didn’t distinguish itself in any approach other than being “The Beetle.” 

It will be the identical case for a revived EV model, besides this time, we’re all out of affection bug love. “[T]listed here are sure autos which have had their day. It wouldn’t make sense to deliver it again,” Schäfer famous. We’re compelled to agree.