Rumor has it that Volkswagen is getting ready to show an all-electric Microbus concept at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January. That’s not terribly surprising in itself?VW has been playing with the idea of an all-new Bus for years, the most recent iteration being the Bulli concept, above, which was revealed at the Geneva motor show back in 2011.
But according to Autocar, next month’s Bus will be an all-electric concept car that gives a very close look at a production vehicle. And according to that publication, it’ll go on sale?in gasoline, diesel, and electric forms?in 2017. (A Volkswagen spokesperson declined to comment on this rumor.)
Volkswagen has been kicking around this idea for a while. Back in April, Dr. Heinz-Jakob Neusser, a product development boss at VW, told a group of journalists that an all-electric Bus, based on the automaker’s flexible, front-drive MQB platform, could be a priority in Volkswagen’s future. “We are actually thinking about how we can take all of the advantages of MQB and put it into a Microbus genetic code,” Neusser said in April. At that time, he described the key design elements: “First, the wide, solid D-pillar; second, the boxy design of the center section; and, thirdly, the front end must have a very short overhang?the distance from the A-pillar to the front end must be very short. Otherwise the hood is too long and it doesn’t look like a Microbus.”?
In that...