Volkswagen's Type 2 van has returned as an EV

Remember the reinvented Volkswagen camper van, dubbed the I.D .Buzz? How about Top Gear's own Ollie Marriage in some skin-tight neoprene to jog your memory? A modern, fully electric and future-autonomous hippy mobile, it's confirmed for production in 2022.

And Volkswagen has thrown away the life of luxuries and passenger practicality to create the I.D. Buzz Cargo – think a Transit made out of Play-Doh. Or, indeed, the original Volkswagen Type 2 van brought back to electric, zero-emission life.

Created by Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, the Buzz Cargo is smaller than a modern Transit, though, designed to be in the class below the brand’s Crafter van (which also got the ‘e’ treatment earlier in the year).

A 48kWh lithium-ion battery is included as standard, although a 111kWh battery can be specced for those further-afield jobs. Both can be charged to 80% in less than an hour from charging points located at vehicle depots, while VW envisions inductive wireless charging in the future. Its electric range can be as vast as 310 miles.

The bubble van gets a solar roof and wide-opening rear doors, plus a sliding door on the passenger side to optimise interior space for shelving and the like, and can carry up to 800kg of stuffs. Up front are three seats, although the middle one can be folded down to act as an on-the-move office with integrated laptop.

Handy man/woman-specific upgrades include a large light on the roof and digital shelving (named Sortimo) that can monitor stock, and remind you of missing items before you leave. In-built digitalness helps you create invoices and make receipts from the comfort of the van.

As we’ve seen a plenty with these autonomous concepts, there’s no traditional cockpit, with any information shown on a head-up display, and the steering wheel retracts into the dash when the Level 4 autonomy is in use.

It's apparently as ready for production as the original I.D. Buzz, too, so we can expect these to be delivering our online shopping from 2022, though perhaps not fully autonomously. Excited?