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by hnav 13 days ago
also the ride, and the interior is not great though post-covid all the other manufacturers except the japanese are speed running to that same interior setup
1 comments

Yeah, I'm waiting to sell it for an EV minivan to come out. The Mercedes VLE looks interesting. I was hopeful for the VW Bus, but it's just underwhelming.
the VLE looks great but the pricepoint basically limits it to livery use in cosmopolitan cities. I'm thinking they'll probably sell 1000s of units over the whole run in north america
IDK, it looks pretty comparable at the bottom end to the Buzz. New vehicles in general are so expensive now. I remember buying my first car in the 2000s for $1K (used, granted) and I couldn't imagine buying something that actually drives for that price anymore.

https://www.caranddriver.com/mercedes-benz/vle-class-ev

What's wrong with the VW bus?
Too expensive for a worse vehicle than the Model Y (with incentives, it was a >$20K difference). I take 1-2 trips for 12 hours a year and the Buzz gets >100mi less range, so that's also a consideration. If it wasn't 50% heavier, it would probably get better range.

IIRC the first generation of it also didn't have the right plug to use the supercharger network, didn't have fast charging, or wasn't available >5 seats in the US, so we've kept waiting for future iterations to improve and it hasn't been good enough for the high price.