Living and working from an all-electric VW ID Buzz

Two humans and a beagle named Hank spent two weeks and 2,000 miles in Europe with a Ququq camping box to preview the future of #vanlife.

Like most people, I’m intrigued by the idea of electric cars but not yet convinced it’s time to make the leap. I can name every Tesla model, a few pickups from Ford and Rivian, and that’s about it. But when Volkswagen announced the production model of the all-electric ID Buzz, which began hitting European roads late last year… well, suddenly, I was very interested.

See, I’m the guy who spent a week living in a VW Transporter T5 “Ventje” last year and once rented a vintage Type 2 VW Microbus named “Fergus” for a summer just to wild camp around Scotland with my family. Generally, I abhor blatant attempts to convert nostalgia into product or ticket sales, but VW had me hooked ever since the ID Buzz was introduced as a far-out concept. That is until I learned the unthinkable: the ID Buzz would launch in passenger and cargo variants only — no “California” campervan. For that, I’d have to wait until 2025 or longer. Ugh!

Then a few months ago, I discovered the aftermarket Ququq BusBox-4 camping box. It converts either the ID Buzz passenger or cargo vans into a two-person camper — and back — in just minutes. It’s available right now, and at €2,790 (about $3,000) costs a fraction of the premium the VW ID California will likely demand.

So, I decided to put the ID Buzz and Ququq to the test to answer two main questions: can today’s ID Buzz already function as an electric campervan, and can it support remote work for an extended period of time?

With that in mind, I packed up my wife and dog and began a nearly 2,000-mile round trip trek across Europe from Amsterdam in the north to Milan in the south, on a loosely planned road trip that still required us to clock in at work each morning. We slept, worked, and ate (minus a few lunches) exclusively from the ID Buzz for a period of two weeks.

The experience was an epiphany for me, a first-time EV driver and aspiring digital nomad, with many lessons learned along the way. The age of e-vanlife is dawning, and our experience with the ID Buzz is a preview of what’s to come.

7Verge Score

Volkswagen ID Buzz with Ququq BusBox-4

To be clear, this isn’t a review of the VW ID Buzz electric van — there are lots of places you can get that from people with much more car experience than I have. This is a review of the ID Buzz as an adaptable do-it-all campervan — one vehicle that serves a variety of needs. For that reason, my single favorite feature is an optional (€331) DC-to-AC inverter that places a European standard 230V power socket beneath the front passenger seat (more on that later).

Say hi to Fergus, our trusty Type 2 Microbus in Scotland.

The ID Buzz is built upon the same MEB platform as VW’s first electric car, the ID.3, just like the original Type 2 Microbus derived from the Type 1 Beetle. So, in reality, the ID Buzz is more than just a cheap nostalgia ploy — it’s following the same evolutionary path as its incredibly iconic and successful predecessors. Knowing that makes me feel less like a hapless victim of the sentimentality machine — or so I tell myself.

My review vehicle is a fully loaded ID Buzz 1st Max Edition passenger van with every option possible. It’s priced at almost €80,000 (about $88,000), which includes roughly €14,000 of taxes here in the Netherlands. For comparison, it’s still much cheaper than a €113,990 base Tesla Model X SUV in the Dutch market at the time of publication.

I will say this in summary of the ID Buzz itself: everyone who drove it or saw it loved it. People were so charmed by it that they would engage me with questions when parked at charging stations or pull up alongside while driving to flash thumbs-up and hang-loose gestures. It was smiles all around, very similar to the joy we spread when driving that delightful old Type 2 around Scotland. Hell, if you look at the front end of the ID Buzz just right, even it seems to be smiling.

The ID Buzz’s low center of gravity, optional 21-inch wheels, and rear-wheel drive combine for a surprisingly fun drive. It also offers excellent visibility for a large car that actually feels small, thanks to a windshield that drops down to clearly mark the front of the car and a bevy of sensors and cameras that alert you to nearby objects. It also has a surprisingly tight turning radius which was very useful when navigating narrow Italian streets.

But I agree with reviewers who say the infotainment system is underpowered and convoluted with a mix of interfaces that leave you wondering if a push, pull, or touch is the expected input (things you’ll eventually develop muscle memory for). The button for the hazard lights, for example, is touch sensitive for some reason resulting in three accidental triggers.

(Not so free) Range

I’m not a car guy, but I do love a big rolling battery that can power all my gadgets. So when I look at the ID Buzz, I see a giant power plant. But as large as the VW ID Buzz is, the battery maxes out at just 82kWh, of which only 77kWh is usable. That’s not a lot for its size, especially when you consider that it’s the same battery capacity found inside the smaller VW ID.4 and ID.5.

The battery capacity was a concern for me — a first-time EV driver — given the conditions I planned to drive in. See, EVs perform optimally in warmer temps around 21C (70F) and at city speeds where regenerative braking can do its thing. My planned route was likely to be cold and fast along great swaths of alpine highway to cover as much of the European charging network as possible. I also planned to regularly tap into the VW’s high-voltage battery while working in order to keep the van heated and all my gear powered on. It wasn’t long until I understood what range anxiety felt like, and I hadn’t even left the house!

Temperatures on my route ranged from -3C to about 17C (27F to 63F) during my two weeks of testing, but mostly they hovered between 3C and 12C (37F to 53F) on average. That meant that the car needed to be continuously heated, which lowered my overall range since the ID Buzz lacks a heat pump found on more efficient EVs. And yes, I can confirm that the ID Buzz has a top speed of 150km/h (93mph), which I verified a few times on the German autobahn.

Based upon my usage — which included siphoning about 5kWh per day to support living and working from the ID Buzz — I was burning through an average of 23.9kWh every 100km (60 miles), or nearly a third of my battery capacity, as reported by the ID Buzz’s infotainment system. That equates to 239Wh consumed per kilometer traveled or 2.6 miles per kWh, putting it much closer to a Ford F-150 Lightning in terms of efficiency than a Tesla Model 3. My driving yielded a range of around 322km (200 miles) per charge — well short of the heavily asterisked 423km (263 miles) WLTP range that VW quotes in its European marketing but in line with the 330km real-range data reported by EV Database.

But here’s the thing: despite these rather underwhelming figures and being a total EV novice, after just one or two days of travel, I never again felt anxious about my range. Mostly because we’re spoiled with choice of fast chargers here in Europe, something I quickly discovered as I meandered my way through the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland, and Italy.

Charging at an ultra-fast Ionity station just steps from a McDonalds. Gross, but convenient.

I found Europe’s network of ultra-fast DC chargers (300kW and greater) offered by companies like FastNed, Shell, Ionity, GoFast, and yes — Tesla — to be surprisingly robust. They were plentiful, located conveniently next to food, shops, and space to run our high-energy dog. And not once did I have to wait for a stall at any DC charging stations we pulled into, even when traveling during the long Easter weekend. In fact, I usually arrived to find the majority of stalls unoccupied and available for immediate ultra-fast charging. And unlike what many have experienced in the US, I can only recall seeing a single broken charger on my entire 3,000km journey.

The ID Buzz supports a stated maximum of 170kW DC fast charging from its CCS port, with a relatively flat charging curve that allows it to go from 5 to 80 percent in about 30 minutes. My stops often lasted longer though, about 45 minutes to an hour, because we wanted to charge to 100 percent and because the stops were a welcome and enjoyable break after two to three hours of driving, especially when you can just open the tailgate and cook up a quick meal.

Cookoo for Ququq

VW says a camper version of the ID Buzz is coming — someday — but it hasn’t committed to a firm timeline yet. That’s where Ququq (pronounced kookook) comes in. It’s a small German company that’s been making all-in-one camping boxes for a variety of vehicles for more than a decade. As an official VW accessory supplier, its party trick is the ability to convert the ID Buzz — cargo or passenger van — into a functional camper complete with a kitchen and bed in less than 10 minutes.

Ququq ready to prepare some penne arrabbiata with a local wine purchased at a vineyard we stayed at outside Milan.

I tested the Ququq BusBox-4 camping box designed specifically to turn the ID Buzz into a tiny mobile home. It really is a marvel of ingenuity — value, too, if you force your brain to squint a little.

See, when VW does finally deliver a true ID California campervan based on the Buzz, it could easily add tens of thousands to the already steep price, same as VW’s current California camper series can more than double the price of a base Transporter today. The Ququq BusBox-4, however, costs just a fraction of that at €2,790 (about $3,000) while making it easy to convert that five-seater into a weekend campervan for mom and dad and their dog while the kids sleep outside in a tent.

The Ququq weighs 62kg (137 pounds) and requires two people to lift the camping box into the back of the ID Buzz. It fits just behind the passenger bench, where it’s secured to the van’s lashing points with included ratchet straps. It’s a little inelegant, but it gets the job done, and it’s easy enough for a couple of sturdy humans to swap in and out of the van whenever the desire strikes.

The 10cm-thick mattress sleeps two comfortably, measuring 125 x 195cm when unfolded over the collapsed passenger bench. That makes for a rather snug arrangement that my wife and I nevertheless found to be sufficiently roomy. Unfolding the three-part bed requires the perfect combination of strength and finesse, which we could each do solo (and safely — watch your fingers!) after a few days of practice.

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