you forgot the most important feature of vintage VW Bugs:
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(Animal wrecks promotional microbus)
Dr. Teeth: Don’t worry! We’ll pay you back!
Zedd Volkswagen: It’s $80,000.
(Beat)
Dr. Teeth: We will not be paying you back.
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man, i miss my old microbus! 70s “breadloaf” style - which, as @Brainspore pointed out above, had no crumple zone and your knees were indeed mere inches from the front panel - but that thing was the coolest thing on four wheels in my mind!
but if this cute little thing will pull a 23’ boat out of the water, i might be tempted to trade in the Tacoma for one. hmm… 
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Is it just me or does the front grill looks really, unnecessarily, ugly? The rest of the design is fine.
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The trend for unnecessarily-large grills on new cars (especially for the electric ones) is one of my pet peeves. But I’m also not a fan of those headlights, which look much angrier than the round ones on the old VWs. It’s supposed to be a friendly-looking car!
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I’m pretty sure my future boat will fit inside! 
Still, there are some industry, infrastructure, and maintenance questions to be answered before I’d trade in my car for something like this.
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Absolutely. I think this will sell well in that demo.
Hell, we don’t have kids, but I’d consider it when it’s finally out.
Like a guy who I used to work with that would mix up his catch phrases “This will sell hot like cakes”.
Also, for those that would like a walk around, etc. video, I watched the below yesterday.
I like how the seats fold if you wanted to use it for car camping, or at least an option if the weather turns bad and the tent isn’t an option.
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Those passenger windows tho.
I had a Jetta that I managed to get 200k miles out of, but by then every fucking window stopped working at least 2x.
I would expect the same with those.
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I just wish that the Chrysler Pacifica plug-in hybrid wasn’t so dang expensive, and had better reliability. It would probably suit my family well but they’re over $50k and tend to be rated at well below-average for reliability. Their relatively poor sales seems to have scared off other manufacturers from entering the hybrid or electric minivan segment so mostly everyone is just selling big SUVs instead. It would be great if VW can make minivan-type vehicles a hot trend again but they may be too expensive to generate massive sales.
The 7-seater is coming to Europe, too, AFAIK.
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while i think you’re right, the larger size isn’t really about function. it’s the advertising gimmick that americans love to fall for: inflating sizes to disproportionately jack up the sale price
one set of back seats and a good sized trunk is more than enough for most families
In 2022, there was an average of 1.94 children under 18 per family in the United States.
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What I don’t get is how could anyone look at the minivan market in the US and thinking “Ooh let’s try to get a slice of that!”
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It looks nice, but I’ll wait to the next gen. Shorter wheelbase, no third seat, and give me some controls instead of a damned touch screen.
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At least they aren’t trying to market yet another ridiculously oversized SUV to city & suburban drivers.
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Exactly. Volvo and even BMW have made some decent screen-knob integrations recently. Who the hell wants to look a big honking computer monitor while driving? OMG the fingerprints alone would drive one mad. I look at a monitor all day for work and I certainly don’t want one in my car too.
An electric VW microbus that looks and feels like a sterile Tesla? Yeah, I don’t think so. The orig VW bus was a DIY kit on wheels. This thing is probably locked tighter than a John Deere tractor.
On a positive note it will generate some clever advertising.
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Here’s the thing about averages: half of families have more than the average number of kids. Over 7 million American families currently have three or more children under age 18. (Mine is one of them, plus my MIL goes on a lot of trips with us.) What car would you recommend for such families? Because I am not a fan of SUVs and am not going to buy a Model X.
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Then there’s the Chinese knockoff of the Beetle:
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that’s why i said most, yes? if i’d said “no families” that’d be a different statement. and even in your case, i’d imagine the smaller version of the bus would work, no?
vw will push the larger one here, because of in terms of marketing - everything in the us must be super sized, even - or especially - when it’s not needed
The standard version currently available in Europe has 5 seats. So enough for my kids (when they don’t elbow each other too much) but not the many trips where my MIL joins us.
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