So I bought a new car...

I bought a new car. This isn’t exciting… In fact, it was really as mundane a process as anyone buying any new vehicle. One that needs to be useful, reliable, get you from place to place, and maybe even look stylish doing it. This time, my wife convinced me to take a look at something silly, a new car that wasn’t as logical or practical as many of the others that I’ve purchased in the past. This one was new, it was electric, and… well, it was goofy.

It’s rare that I find new technology that provides as much joy as I’ve found in Volkswagen’s reboot of their famous VW Bus, the 2025 ID Buzz. It’s also rare that I see that joy manifest from not just using that new tech, but also from random people who happen to be nearby. This car is weird, it’s different, it’s goofy. It drives goofy - the driver’s seat is way up by the wheelbase, which makes you feel like you’re in a snub-nosed moving van. It looks goofy - The profile is whimsical like the original VW bus, and the second row windows open in relatively tiny portholes. It sounds goofy - The horn is what one would expect on a happy VW bus, and it whirrs around with the hum of an electric car. It’s just goofy, and goofy in the best way possible.

I obviously love driving it, even despite some of its software quirks and the American-sized wheelbase which makes it drive more like a truck instead of a maneuverable compact utility vehicle. But what continues to surprise me is how people react to you driving this car around. If you park to get some takeout dinner or pop into a store, people come up to the car and ask you, “how do you like the car!?” “Is it fun?” When you drive around town, random people on the street corner of all ages will point at your goofy vehicle, smile and wave. When you pass other ID Buzz drivers, they excitedly flash your lights or honk their horn and wave while you pass.

It’s an odd club that I’ve accidentally joined, but it’s a very fun club.

This gives me great joy. I can say for the first time in my life… I love driving a car because of how much joy it brings others, and this colorful car embraces that thing that perhaps what we, globally, as a culture may have lost in the past few years: personality and character in our technology. All of our phones are single panes of glass in a brick that come in a dystopian color choice of grey, kind-of-grey, and shiny-grey. Cars generally are black, white, or beige. Paint schemes in our home aren’t far behind. And yet, the 2025 ID Buzz will not be sold in the US in 2026 (They’re choosing to skip a model year). This decision by Volkswagen isn’t because people didn’t have enough fun in the cars, but really amounts to price, perceived features, and uncertainty.

The price tag is a bit of a doozy considering the variety in today’s new car landscape. I looked at it through the lens of the EV market: it’s more affordable than the Tesla model X (which is closer in cabin space and size than other Tesla models), but that sticker price is comparably high when placed against other choices in the VW family, or even elsewhere in the market for a minivan-like car. This was a known downside when I walked into the dealership: goofy comes at a premium. Luckily, I also had the fortune of being able to exercise some state tax incentives, and happened upon a black Friday promotion to make the cost easier to digest.

This price tag also is hard to swallow when looking at the maximum range of the car: 230 miles. The range is much lower than comparable models near the same cost. Originally, I found the range argument to be less concerning. I’ve literally never looked at the size of the gas tank on a traditional car when purchasing because refueling stations are so frequent. Most of my daily driver needs are use cases that simply don’t require more than a 230 mile range (even if it’s hampered further by cold weather.) Now… with that said, I do find myself contemplating the car’s battery level much more like a mobile phone than a traditional car. One internally starts panicking when you go below 20%, and yet… I remember running cars well past the little “E” light in conventional autos. I think that anxiety sets in because charging takes around 20 minutes on a level three charger (fast DC at 200kW), or around 6 hours on the home EV charger at 240V (~11kW). It’s not the quick refuel that most of us grew up with. It’s just a touch more stressful - a change in habits to fuel a car that I think will simply take a little more time to get used to.

Lastly, the reason that Volkswagen has paused sales comes down to good old economics and uncertainty. The car is assembled exclusively in Hamburg Germany, which means that for US buyers, the current US government administration subjects its import to a nearly 25% tariff. Combine this with the “goofy” factor (appealing to a smaller pool of conventional buyers), range perception, and a high price tag to start, and the car becomes untenable at least in the short term. It’s also uncertain given the historic random shotgun approach to tariffs whether this cost could fluctuate tariffs to 100% or more.

While I can think of about a dozen things I’d change on the car (email me, Volkswagen product management. My feedback awaits), I’m enjoying new technology on the car such as the heat pump being able to pre-heat the car in a closed garage and the timed electric charging to avoid peak electrical grid load. Mostly, I’m just enjoying making people smile as I zip by in something that’s undeniably goofy.