id buzz concept

VW electric dune buggy – a pre-Geneva teaser

Retro beach cruiser shows off the flexibility of VW’s EV platform

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Volkswagen have gone public with some teaser images of the new electric dune buggy. It looks suitably groovy and ripe for some (almost silent) ’70s-style fun, with its doorless, big-wheeled body shell.

Tearing himself away from an admiring crowd of bikini-clad, sufboard-toting beach babes, VW design head Klaus Bischoff explained: “A buggy is more than a car. It is vibrancy and energy on four wheels. These attributes are embodied by the new e-buggy, which demonstrates how a modern, non-retro interpretation of a classic can look and, more than anything else, the emotional bond that electric mobility can create.”

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The more serious side, however, is that, replicating the adaptability of the Beetle chassis that underpinned almost every buggy from its heyday (the Meyers Manx being the best-known), the new dune buggy is a showcase for the flexibility of Volkswagen’s MEB EV skateboard platform.

“The new MEB concept vehicle shows that this fully electric platform can be used for more than just large-scale series production models,” said the company. “Like the Beetle chassis of yesteryear, the MEB has the potential to facilitate the development of low-volume niche vehicles.”

The buggy follows on from several other raids on the company’s heritage archive, most notably the ID Buzz (below), the retro-styled EV which was first shown in Detroit in 2017, and is now slated for production.

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