10 Best Things About the 2025 Volkswagen ID.Buzz

2025 Volkswagen ID.Buzz Pro S Plus ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Three years after the 1998 Volkswagen New Beetle’s retro charm took the auto industry by storm, VW was preparing to recapture that magic. This time, it sought inspiration from another ’60s staple with the 2001 Microbus Concept – a van with a near-vertical front end and two-tone paint.

It took nearly a quarter of a century, but that concept has finally evolved into a production vehicle you can buy: the 2025 Volkswagen ID.Buzz. It’s not the slow, crude, and affordable VW Bus of the hippie generation. This is a luxuriously equipped, luxuriously finished, fully electric vehicle that starts at $59,995. For this review, we just spent a week driving the new ID.Buzz. Whether you’re looking for a big family car with low fuel costs or just love how the ID.Buzz looks, keep reading as we go through our 10 favorite things about this flashy new VW. 

Stands Out in a Crowd

Whenever I pulled up the driveway in the ID.Buzz, my wife would come to the window and watch. As she explained, “It makes me so happy to see it.” 

Especially with our test vehicle’s two-tone Pomelo Yellow and white paint, the ID.Buzz draws attention. It’s a cheerful-looking upright rectangle; a conventional minivan like the Honda Odyssey is 10 inches longer and 5 inches lower. Unlike another famously unique-looking electric vehicle – the Tesla Cybertruck – the ID.Buzz looks happy instead of angry. 

Between its height and its shape, you won’t have any trouble spotting your ID.Buzz in a parking lot. And for many people, you’ll smile when you do. 

2025 Volkswagen ID.Buzz Pro S Plus ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Zippy Acceleration

Electric vehicles like the ID.Buzz deliver peak torque right off the line, and they accelerate with minimal noise. That means you can leap forward from a stop or jump into gaps in traffic quickly and without drama. 

The base ID.Buzz powertrain on our test vehicle has a single rear motor powering the rear wheels. It makes a healthy 282 horsepower and a whopping 413 lb-ft of torque, and VW says it’ll reach 60 mph in 7.4 seconds. A few other vans and certainly some other EVs are even faster, but we had no complaints about our ID.Buzz’s speed. We did find ourselves jolting forward from a stop in the default Comfort mode, while the selectable Eco mode has a gentler throttle response. You can also choose Sport mode when you’re certain you want to get moving in a hurry or craft your own custom mode. An optional front motor provides all-wheel drive, boosts output to 335 hp, and cuts the 0-60 sprint to 6 seconds flat. 

2025 Volkswagen ID.Buzz Pro S Plus ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Agile Handling

Another performance benefit to EVs is their sporty handling. Because their heavy electric batteries live under the floor, they have a low center of gravity – the opposite of what you might expect from such a tall van. Paired with the instant throttle response, the ID.Buzz is a delightful car to zip along a winding road. Keep in mind that this is a three-ton van, not a two-seat roadster. But as vans go, it’s easily the one we have the most fun driving. 

The ID.Buzz also rides comfortably. Its tautly tuned suspension isn’t as cushily isolating as some big family cars, but it keeps this van feeling controlled without being too stiff. It’s quiet, too, except for extra road hum that starts to intrude at freeway speeds. 

2025 Volkswagen ID.Buzz Pro S ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Electric Efficiency

We’ve mentioned EVs’ speed and handling. Now for most folks’ favorite part: efficiency. 

In EPA testing, the rear-drive ID.Buzz gets the equivalent of 90 mpg in the city and 75 mpg on the highway, which comes to 83 MPGe combined. All-wheel drive drops those figures to 87 MPGe city, 74 MPGe highway, and 80 MPGe combined. That’s excellent for a big three-row vehicle, though the Kia EV9 crossover gets up to 89 MPGe combined. 

The EPA’s estimated range for the ID.Buzz is a modest 234 miles per charge with rear-wheel drive and 231 miles with AWD. That’s plenty for most people’s daily use and short road trips, but it means frequent stops if you’re trying to drive across multiple states per day. The good news is that we exceeded that range estimate; starting with 86 percent charge, we drove 205 miles and had 9 percent remaining. The trip computer estimated we could have driven another 26 miles after that, too. We can extrapolate that overall range to about 270 miles. 

As with other EVs, electricity tends to be inexpensive and convenient if you can typically recharge at home. However, if you rely on public stations, it becomes more complicated and expensive – particularly on DC fast chargers. At a DC charger, you can recapture up to 81 miles of charge in the first 10 minutes and get from 10 percent to 80 percent charge in as little as 26 minutes. On a 240-volt car charger, like you’d install in your garage, you can take an empty battery to full in as little as nine hours – so you’d be able to drive 230 miles in a day, fill it back up while you sleep, then wake up the next day and do it again. 

2025 Volkswagen ID.Buzz Pro S Plus ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Airy Interior

The driver enjoys a fishbowl-like view from the front of the ID.Buzz, with a big windshield and glass that wraps all the way around the thin roof pillars. The minimalist dashboard design complements this airy feel. There’s no connection between the removable center console and the dash itself, and storage bins and cupholders can also fold away when they’re not in use. A 12.9-inch touchscreen sits at the center of the dash, while a 5.3-inch screen sits behind the steering wheel to provide the digital speedometer and a couple other small displays. Unlike some EVs, the ID.Buzz supports wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay smartphone integration.

We like the open feel of the ID.Buzz’s interior, and the design is attractive. As a note of caution, though, we did not like the controls. Too many simple processes required multiple steps, each needing careful taps at the flush surface of a screen or a touch-sensitive button. Adjusting the audio volume, operating the cruise control, changing climate settings, even opening the rear windows or adjusting the side mirrors – all of it was an exercise in frustration. VW could have created an attractive, modern interior without selling out the user experience. 

2025 Volkswagen ID.Buzz Pro S Plus ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Mega Legroom

We mentioned that the ID.Buzz isn’t as long as typical minivans. But that length is missing from its nose, not its cabin. Passengers get uncommonly generous legroom in all three rows. 

The second row adjusts fore-aft, but there’s no wrong position. Even all the way forward, adults have enough knee space in the second row. All the way back, even adults fit comfortably in the third row. 

The ID.Buzz offers a wide, comfortable bench seat like in our test vehicle, which provides maximum seating for seven passengers. Available captain’s chairs drop the capacity to six. The third row has only three seatbelts, while most vans have three. It’s a curious choice because the ID.Buzz is easily wide enough to fit three people in the third row. Turns out, it’s so wide, VW had to recall the vehicle to install a divider between the two seating positions – a federal requirement to keep people from trying to sit where they don’t have a seatbelt. 

2025 Volkswagen ID.Buzz Pro S ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Big, Flexible Cargo Hold

Volkswagen boasts the the ID.Buzz has the most cargo space of any minivan: 145.5 cubic feet behind the front seats. That’s also more than a Chevrolet Suburban full-size SUV. 

The ID. Buzz’s big cargo hold does have some limitations, though. Most minivans let you fold down the third-row seat into the floor. Volkswagen instead lets you fold them forward (creating a higher floor surface) or remove them (they’re heavy to move and bulky to store somewhere out of the van). Meanwhile, the second-row seats fold flat as well, lying flush with the folded third row. Combined with a cargo tray, you can quickly get a flat cargo floor in your ID.Buzz – just one that’s high off the ground. The second-row seats aren’t removable like the third row, so you don’t get a flat surface if you want the maximum 145.5 cubic feet. 

We also wish VW had given up a few inches of the ID.Buzz’s incredible second- and third-row legroom to create a bit more cargo space behind the third row. WIth just 18.6 cubic feet of space, it has half the cargo volume of the typical minivan – for more than a few grocery bags, expect to fold the third row down. 

Long List of Features

We mentioned at the start of this review that the 2025 Volkswagen ID.Buzz starts at $59,995. We’re glad you didn’t stop reading. That’s not only a reasonable starting price by the standards of three-row electric vehicles (we’ll discuss the competition in a minute), but VW also justifies it by packing the ID.Buzz with standard features. 

The base Pro S model has convincing faux leather upholstery with heated, ventilated, and massaging front seats; the full-size 12.9-inch touchscreen with GPS navigation; a heated steering wheel; rain-sensing windshield wipers; adaptive cruise control; front and rear automatic emergency braking; and blind-spot monitoring with a rear cross-traffic alert. 

The Pro S Plus, like our test vehicle, starts at $63,495. The extra cash buys you four more stereo speakers (13 total), hands-free operation for the power liftgate and sliding doors, a head-up display, and a surround-view parking camera. This trim level also lets you add rear captain’s chairs ($645), a panoramic sunroof ($1,495), or the second motor for all-wheel drive ($4,500). The top 1st Edition, $65,495, includes the sunroof and allocates the extra $500 premium to a few exclusive styling details. 

Built in Germany, the ID.Buzz currently qualifies for a $7,500 federal tax credit only when leased. It’s also currently at the mercy of 25 percent tariffs on imported cars. 

2025 Volkswagen ID.Buzz Pro S Plus ・ Photo by Brady Holt

More Functional Than the Electric Competition

Families looking for three rows of seats in their EV have few choices. The Kia EV9 crossover and its corporate cousin, the new 2026 Hyundai Ioniq 9, have more range for the money than the ID.Buzz – but much less passenger and cargo room. The Rivian R1S SUV is faster and has a much longer range than the Volkswagen (with its optionally upgraded batteries), but it costs a lot more and also isn’t as spacious. Same goes for the more luxurious, less sporty Volvo EX90. The Tesla Model X and Model Y have even tinier third-row seats than these others. And none of them has the convenience of power sliding doors. 

The ID.Buzz’s closest minivan rival is the Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid – at least on paper. The Pacifica Hybrid is a plug-in hybrid, or PHEV; it can travel an EPA-estimated 32 miles per charge, then a gasoline engine kicks on to keep it going until you can recharge. That makes it an economical commuter vehicle and a flexible road-trip companion – but it’s not especially economical between charges. The Toyota Sienna, meanwhile, is a conventional hybrid that gets 36 mpg without needing a plug. But the ID.Buzz is funky and fun to drive, and the Sienna and Pacifica are neither. Both the Sienna and the Pacifica Hybrid have much lower starting prices than the ID.Buzz, but fully optioned models also edge past $60,000. 

2024 Kia EV9 Land ・ Photo by Brady Holt

Endearing, Efficient, and Useful

We love driving the 2025 Volkswagen ID.Buzz, and unlike many cars we love driving, it’s also useful and economical. We wish VW had handled a few things differently with the controls, seating, and cargo configurations. And we wish the company would offer a base model for, say, $55,000 without the massaging seats and a few other extras. The lower VW could bring down the ID.Buzz’s cost, the broader its appeal. 

As it is, the ID.Buzz is a niche product. It’s for people who want an EV and don’t mind a relatively short range per charge, and who are willing to pay up for a big one. If you fit that niche, make sure you don’t hate the controls too much. Otherwise, you should love it. 

2025 Volkswagen ID.Buzz Pro S Plus ・ Photo by Brady Holt