We’ve wanted a reborn Volkswagen Microbus for absolute ages, but it didn’t turn out quite the way everyone expected. Starting with the 2001 Microbus concept, the automaker essentially edged fans of the iconic people carrier for nearly a quarter of a century and multiple concept cars, before finally letting them have it with the ID.Buzz. It looks the part, but there are two obvious problems: 234 miles of range isn’t enough for a family road trip vehicle, and a starting price of more than $60,000 is outrageous. While there’s no easy way of fixing the former, it turns out time is doing wonderful things to the latter.
After pretty much a three-year wait for the North American version, the Volkswagen ID.Buzz hasn’t exactly been a quick seller. We’re talking 6,140 units sold in 2025. However, Volkswagen cites general EV market conditions as the reason why the ID.Buzz is taking a gap year for 2026, potentially returning for 2027. As it stands, 2025 model year examples are thick on the ground, and there are some absolute deals to be had.
Take this brand new 2025 ID.Buzz, for example. Sure, it’s not two-tone, nor is it all-wheel-drive, but it’s listed for sale at a Mckinney, Texas Volkswagen dealership for $45,235. Yep, that’s $16,310 off the base price, a discount that makes it cheaper than a one-trim-up-from-the-base-model Toyota Sienna XLE.
Maybe you’re more of a silver sort of person, matching your car to your aluminum-case laptop. No worries, a Volkswagen dealership in Burlington, N.C. has this brand new example listed for $45,880. That initially sounds like $16,400 off, but you will want to be mindful of a $799 dealer fee. Still, less than $47,000 for a funky minivan rather than a regular minivan seems a lot more tempting than a price tag north of $60,000.
Here’s another black ID.Buzz Pro S, listed for sale by a Volkswagen dealer in Buford, Georgia. Like the others, it’s brand new and heavily discounted. We’re looking at an asking price of $45,369, including the dealer administration fee, which works out to a genuine $16,611 below sticker price.
Want two-tone paint? Similar deals exist on funkier-looking models, although because they start more expensive in the first place, the advertised prices are higher than we’re seeing on black or silver ID.Buzz examples. Take this Cherry Red and Metro Silver example, up for sale at a dealership in Colorado for $48,198. That’s $15,407 off, and while it’s not quite as temptingly inexpensive as a monochrome example, it does look great.
So what’s going on here? Well, it’s largely a case of dealers stacking discounts on top of manufacturer incentives. At the time of writing, Volkswagen is running a $7,500 incentive on eligible ID.Buzz models, and discounts deeper than that suggest dealers don’t believe $7,500 alone is enough to move this sort of metal. With more than 1,300 brand new ID.Buzz vans listed for sale nationwide, it wouldn’t be surprising if these discounts stick around as dealers seek to move metal. If you’re a fan of the ID.Buzz, but not a fan of its pricing, perhaps now’s the time.
Top graphic image: Volkswagen
Almost there on the price.
Amazing that they are all very close to the same discount. Coincidence, my ass.
DT: are the three or four ID.Buzzes still for sale at Galpin?
All it needs is a range extender fifth wheel. Or add more batteries to the cargo area.
This is probably a bad idea, since no one has done it.
I am sorry but the new VW Bus has none of the attributes of the old VW BUS.
This van is the definition of close but no cigar…
But yet it looks kinda like one…
I bought a used 92-X after manufacturer discounts killed the resale value (when Saab/GM stopped selling it and tried to clear it out of the lots), so I wonder where prices for a 3000-4000 mile top of the trim used ID.Buzz will end up.
Was that the rebadged Impreza?
Seems like it would be an easy weekend project to make a monotone one two-tone with some plastidip. That’s a pretty strong character line/gap path to separating the two zones.
I would seriously consider this as a kid hauler… except it would need to be able to make it from Chicago to Cincinnati (295 miles). We always have a lunch stop on that trip, and I suppose its close enough to the reported range that a lunch length recharge would get us there, but it would be pretty close.
The thing is, of our two cars one is the kid hauler/camping vehicle/AWD snow handler (Forester) and the other is the city commuter/fun/fast/small car (GTI). So unless I’m willing to give up my small fast car for something bigger, the kid hauler also needs to have range and AWD. I’m really warming up to the idea of an AWD minivan with a roof rack, so this is so close… but not quite there.
A lunch length charging stop will get you from Chicago to Cincinnati in most modern EVs. We have a 2019 Kia Niro EV. 240 mile EPA rating, 200 conservative highway miles at 80ish mph. Has a 64kWh battery and 72kW max charging speed. Usually gets 50-60kW. Stop for lunch around 175 mile mark(~12.5% charge left). If you’re parked for 44 minutes at the charger you’ll be up to 80% easily giving another 140 miles of highway range before getting below 10% charge.
If you drive a bit slower or there’s traffic, you’d probably do much better and only need a 20-30 minute stop. But we always find that a lunch stop runs longer, and we get plenty of time to charge.
The ID.buzz has a moderately bigger battery(91kWh) but a much faster charging rate(200kW) and can do 10%-80% in 30 minutes at an appropriate charger.
The only major catch is if it’s severely cold in the -5°F or below. Then you might have to make two charging stops. Around the lakes it usually doesn’t stay that cold for very long so it wouldn’t be my biggest concern, but living in Chicago it would worth making sure to get one with the heat pump option.
My brother bought one to replace his iD4. It’s pretty fun and I’d buy one if I was in the market for a new EV. He got a pretty solid deal on his too.
I mean, this is a thing for lots of EVs right now. Near me, there is 10k on the hood of every Equinox EV as soon as it hits the lot. This is off topic but that doesn’t bode well for the Bolt…
These are such frustrating vehicles. Why did they have to be so compromised and so expensive?
Because VW’s Commercial Group won the internal battle to design and build it.
I’ve started seeing more but still not a lot. It’s not really a discount but a price correction. It’s where they were expected to be in the beginning. They probably need to be under $30k for most people to consider them.
“a discount that makes it cheaper than a one-trim-up-from-the-base-model Toyota Sienna XLE”
I’d still take the Sienna. Minivans are road trip material and 230 miles of best-case-scenario range doesn’t cut it there. And I’m afraid the $16,000 discount is just start of monetary losses for the ID. The Sienna is ugly and slower and less interesting but it works better as a primary vehicle, it probably won’t break and it will be worth something in 10 years.
I would buy one if it had a range I was willing to live with, but if it had the range I was willing to live with, it wouldn’t be discounted.
No discounts here in San Jose. In fact they have 3 there are trying to get $4k over sticker!
https://www.stevenscreekvw.com/id-buzz/
Ah, the Silicon Valley markup.
Buzz kill.
Oh buzz off with those puns.
C’mon . . . bee of good cheer.
I saw a two tone yellow one this weekend and it looked great and brought a smile to my face.
Would have been a great replacement for my Odyssey if they’d managed to give it decent range & a much lower price.
They must be embarassed by the range, since it’s not even mentioned on the marketing page. https://www.vw.com/en/models/id-buzz.html
Edit: Found it buried in the Build page, under technical specs, at the very bottom. Road trips would be pretty tedious.
Problem is that VW tried to sell a $45,000 vehicle for $60,000.
I bet if it was stickered at $45k and was ICE or hybrid, it would be selling like hotcakes.
If this thing was 45k and a hybrid it would be a totally competitive family vehicle that totally stands out from the rest of the far more boring minivan designs out now. VW wouldn’t be able to build enough. I would more than likely own one, despite my reluctance to own a VW product.
Exactly. Hybrid and $45k and these things sell like crazy. Instead… 180 miles range and $60k+. Wonder why nobody is buying them in the US?
Man, the two-tone really makes these things work.
They were SO close on this one
…and yet so far away.
it just needs to be … bigger or smaller and more aero dynamic. As is it’s like a minivan for people who don’t need a minivan.
It’s better suited elsewhere, just not for American roads/folks. Globally sales doubled last year. But they had more options and less instability.
Missed it by around $20k.
Starting at $40k, nicely equipped 2 tone for $50k would be tempting.
Yes, the range isn’t great, but a shocking amount of minivan duty is driving to a school to pick up the kids to take to afterschool activities to take them home to do it again tomorrow. As a minivan owner, I remember the long road-trips to visit family or out-of-state soccer tournaments and the like, but the vast majority of the time, the van is within 100 miles of home base.
And even for road trips, 200 miles under the wheel and a significant break isn’t horrible. My wife and I have rarely gone much over 150 miles in a stint. We like to take our time. When the kids were little, the idea was to drive all night while the kids slept and get use of the large gas tank on our van. That never worked out, because we had a pug as a pet. If you haven’t dealt with pugs, they are nicknamed “fart dogs” for a reason. Once they get sleepy, they start snoring out of both ends… LOUDLY. Nothing will wake up a pile of kids quicker than a pug merrily snore-farting away in their midst.
Nothing is going to normalize delusional car prices, but clearly a market for short range battery cars can be created by selling pugs to the public.
Frenchies are popular right now. They are basically pugs with stick up ears and also could likely fly if you put a lighter to their rears when they are sleeping.
The real limitation on driving was me more than anything else. No idea why, but I drink a lot when I drive. (hmm, that didn’t sound right). I can sit at my desk for 8 hours and go through a half liter of water and a can of soda and be happy. But put me in a car and I’ll drink a liter of water and a can of soda inside of 2 hours. When you hydrate as much as I do when driving, you end up stopping every 2 hours if not sooner.
My opinion is that 15 minute breaks every 2 hours is a healthier way to drive at least for me. If I need to be someplace so quickly that I can’t stop for 15 minutes every 2 hours, I should be shopping airline tickets.
Saw a bunch of these when I was in Copenhagen last year, ironically (to american eyes) being used as work vans, which in an urban environment actually makes a ton of sense.
I get that companies feel they have to do a moonshot occasionally, and arguably the OG Microbus still has a unique cultural cachet in the US, saw a guy in his mid 20s driving one the other day. But I can’t for the life of me see how VW thought they were going to sell more than a handful at the price they were asking. Not least bc the people with the most fondness for these (baby boomers) largely have no need for what appears to be a rather large minivan-iirc we don’t even get the shorter wheelbase variant.
Yeah, LWB only unfortunately. I’d be more interested in the SWB.
I’m prob not the target buyer but I think the shorter ones seem more appealing.
Agreed!
The hubris of VW to build a single one of these without two-tone paint is simply next level.
I don’t know, maybe like the Ford GT, getting a solid color will improve its collectability and net you an extra $75.99 in resale in 20 years.
That’s not a bet I’d take.
Let me know when the price hits $16k, not the discount. The specs on these are terrible.
Canadian dealerships are advertising as much as $26,000 off, but they’re still over $60,000!
Even at those prices, I bet these are hard to move.
Low energy VW failing bigly.
Sad.
The Buzz is so depressing. All VW had to do was make this 20 years ago as a gasser and they’d probably be much better off. Maybe then they wouldn’t have started cheating on diesel emissions tests.
I mean they probably still would have cheated but at least they could still sell some of these on the side.
They’d definately have put a diesel in these and sold them alongside the golfs and passats. And they’d have made a killing on them with 30+mpg ratings compared to what other minivans were getting in those days.
My logic is the gas Bus would have been successful enough to the point where they wouldn’t have to sink to the desperate level of cheating.
Still too expensive for a rwd van with limited range, not in any of the interesting colors, and what might be a single year production run in the US (ie have fun with repairs/support)
Same parts and factory as the Euro version, so it could be worse, but not great.