More than 20,000 ID.Buzz have been sold during pre-sale

VW announced that during the pre-sale period it has sold over 20,000 units of ID.Buzz, the company did not provide details on how many units of each version - Cargo or passenger - were sold. The pre-sale went live before the car was available at the dealerships and the company expects that number to grow significantly after the ID.Buzz becomes available for display and test drives across Europe.

20,000 vehicles sold is already more than VW planned to manufacture this year. Both the Cargo and passenger versions of ID.Buzz are made in Hanover and the factory plans to scale up the production to 130,000 units per year but the company did not put a firm date on when the ramp up will be complete.

At the start, ID.Buzz is only available with the 82 kWh battery pack and only with a single motor powering rear wheels -the only options customers have at this moment is to go for either Cargo or passenger version. Once the production increases the company will introduce other versions.

Although 20,000 cars sold without being seen by the buyers sounds like a lot, digging deeper reveals a slightly different story. The first 6,000 units are going to the dealerships as display and customer test vehicles, then there is a fleet of press vehicles. That leaves the actual customers with no more than 9,000 cars available this year which means long waiting lists. Placing an order for ID.Buzz right now will mean middle of next year delivery or even later - which is still good compared to what other manufacturers offer.

Early tests reveal the ID.Buzz is rather competitive, it offers good range and a lot of space obviously, the US version will be even bigger and will offer 7-seat configuration. All that comes at a price though, the ID.Buzz starts at nearly €65,000 in Germany before any incentives, the Cargo version starts at nearly €55,000. The original VW Bus was less than $2,000 in 1970, at that time when the average salary was just over $6,000. That puts the current prices in a slightly different perspective.

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