Hamburg For Volkswagen it is the most important new model this year: the electric ID.Buzz. At the van subsidiary VW Commercial Vehicles (VWN) in Hanover, intensive preparations are underway for the start of production and sales – the car is to be officially presented at the beginning of March.
The first camouflaged models were on the streets around Hamburg at the weekend. Volkswagen intends to release advance sales before the summer, and the first vehicles are expected to be delivered to customers in the fall.
The first pre-series models of the ID.Buzz are currently being worked on in Hanover. Around ten electric minibuses currently leave the transporter plant every day. However, it will probably be a few weeks before full series production begins. VWN wants to start doing this before the summer break. Several tens of thousands of copies are likely to be manufactured this year.
“There will probably be 50,000 to 60,000 in the first full year,” said VWN Sales Director Lars Krause during the test drive in Hamburg. After that, Volkswagen could further expand annual production. The decisive factor is that customer demand for the new vehicle will develop accordingly.
Top jobs of the day
Find the best jobs now and
be notified by email.
Volkswagen starts selling the ID.Buzz initially in Germany. VWN wants to offer the minibus as a car and also as a commercial vehicle, for example for craftsmen. The sales planners in Hanover calculate that VWN will sell more copies of the commercial vehicle version than the passenger car version in the long term. Both versions should be available from Volkswagen dealers when deliveries start in the fall. The passenger car variant should cost less than 50,000 euros in Germany after deduction of the state subsidy. Volkswagen intends to announce the exact prices at the beginning of March.
The VW Group is not only hoping for sales success with the new electric bus in Germany and Europe, but above all in the USA. In the United States, Volkswagen made a name for itself with its “Bulli” in the 1970s and 1980s. VW is now hoping to be able to build on these sales successes from the past with the first purely electric minibus.
Production in the USA conceivable
If the demand in North America is high enough, the electric bus could one day also be produced directly in the USA. A decision has not yet been made, according to VWN sales manager Krause. Volkswagen has its own factory in the US state of Tennessee, where the ID.Buzz could roll off the assembly lines. The start of sales in North America is planned for the coming year.
Volkswagen is betting that the new electric bus will establish itself on the market very quickly. “We have a unique selling proposition,” said VWN Sales Director Krause. The competition does not yet have any vans or minibuses that have been developed and designed as electric vehicles from the start. Most of the competitors would have converted combustion models on offer that would have been given an electric drive afterwards.
For the ID.Buzz, Volkswagen uses the “modular electrification kit” (MEB), which the Wolfsburg-based company also uses for the battery-powered cars from the ID model series and which allows a high degree of standardization. This gives the electric bus driving characteristics reminiscent of passenger cars. The ID.Buzz is around 20 centimeters shorter than the VW Transporter with a combustion engine. Because the electric drive is significantly smaller than a diesel, there is plenty of space inside the ID.Buzz for the passengers.
>> Read here, what plans Volkswagen is pursuing for the next five years.
From VW’s point of view, the battery-powered minibus symbolizes the fundamental change from the car manufacturer to an electric supplier. “The vehicle stands for the transformation of Volkswagen,” said Ralf Brandstätter, CEO of the core brand VW Passenger Cars. From the past, there is also a high emotional bond between customers and the “Bulli”. This should enable correspondingly high sales figures for the ID.Buzz.
But a sales success for the new electric bus is not automatically guaranteed. “The reference to a successful past is not enough,” says Frank Schwope, automotive analyst at NordLB in Hanover. An example: With the “New Beetle”, Volkswagen wanted to commemorate the Beetle’s past, but the real lasting sales successes failed to materialize. Volkswagen therefore had to remove the New Beetle from the model portfolio.
Electric drive could help the car to succeed
Because of the smaller quantities than with cars, it is even more difficult to sell a minibus successfully in the long term. A look at Volkswagen’s past shows that, according to auto analyst Schwope. After the turn of the millennium, the Wolfsburg-based group tried several times to bring new minibuses onto the market, which were also based on earlier model concepts. The best-known vehicle was the so-called “Microbus”, the development of which Volkswagen had pushed ahead with over the years. The project was then discontinued due to a lack of prospects of success.
This fate does not have to threaten the ID.Buzz, the electric drive could actually make the car a success. But Volkswagen first has to prove that it can succeed. “The vehicle is still a niche product. It remains to be seen whether the combustion models can be replaced with it,” adds Schwope.
For the VW transporter factory in Hanover in particular, it is crucial that the ID.Buzz can establish itself in the long term. The plant needs the electric bus to ensure reliable capacity utilization. The factory will lose part of its previous combustion engine production in the coming years. In the future, Volkswagen will be manufacturing the commercial vehicle version of the classic Transporter with Ford. This vehicle will then no longer come from Hanover, but from a Ford plant in Turkey.
Volkswagen had withdrawn the “Amarok” pick-up model from the Hanover factory a long time ago. In the future, this vehicle will also be produced jointly with Ford and will then come from a factory belonging to the US group in South Africa. VWN wants to launch this new “Amarok” this year as well.
More: Brand boss Brandstätter on the VW investment plan: “This is a whole new way of car production”