VW buzz owners – assistance please – what do I need

Hello all, so I have a lease buzz arriving in a couple of weeks. Never had a EV before so have ordered a home charger – slight problem as where it is going to be installed us currently being renovated so living in old house but charger point at new house a mile away.

but apart from that what do I need or what would you recommend?

Do I need a dumb charger so I can charge from current home with no external pod? If so where do I get one?

What provider for electricity… thinking octopus….and I assume I will need a smart meter?

Any recommendations for seat covers and protection for the seats and boot? Think dogs and bikes the giving it back to lease company.

Any recommendations on charging on the go given range of buzz, any recommendations on apps that are up to date on charging.

How goes it with range on the buzz?

Any help welcome on living with the buzz on a daily basis.

Cheers

Intelligent Octopus Go needs a smart meter yes. This seems to be the preferred supplier.

You might need a dumb 3-pin charger, you might not. Mine has only been genuinely useful once.

For charging on the go, I recommend just using your debit card and ignoring app faff. The only exception is if you become an Octopus customer you can get an Electroverse card, you can wave that instead of your debit card for a 20% discount. If you want to locate chargers, use Zap Map, but the live information on what chargers are free doesn’t seem very up to date – my car is more accurate, but I don’t know about VWs. There is also an Electroverse app that shows you where chargers are that are on the Electroverse scheme but I don’t know how accurate its live info is.

I think many of your questions might depend a bit on how you use the vehicle OP. If you travel a lot and need to charge several times a week and away from home, it might require a different approach to someone charging up once a week.

I have a VW ID – it works fine with intelligent Octopus Go, but you need to have the full compatible setup. That’s car, charger unit  smart meter, and phone to run the app. They have a compatibility checker online where you can put in all your stuff and it’ll let you know if it will work. Octopus have been a good supplier for me, no complaints.

I don’t need to charge away from home that often, the range on my ID is around 200 miles if I drive lazily, but if you are new to this  remember that the range will plunge on a really cold day. The ID Buzz uses the same platform as the other IDs as far as I know but is obviously a bit less aerodynamic.

A dumb charger was something I’d thought about, but they are so slow I don’t know if I can think of a circumstance where it would be the best solution.

If you do go to Octopus Go or similar, the big perk is the low overnight rate, so learn how to manage the delay settings on washing machines, dishwashers etc to get the benefit. Yeah, I know someone will point out that this will definitely kill you in your sleep, but that’s the savings model here!

The tip would be to charge the Buzz on that overnight rate at home as much as you can – charging at fast chargers on the road is much more expensive, but I’m sure you know that.  If you have to drive an EV bus on big roads and long distances, then economy will become a big deal for you – the difference in range between doing 55mph and 70mph is going to be really noticeable, so factor that into journeys. If you aren’t doing long journeys then smart charging at home is no big deal at all and really easy to manage in a cost-effective way, just plug in and leave it to do its thing.

What’s your normal driving distance? We charge our EV to 80% which means 190 miles so similar range to what the buzz gets I think? I thought I’d need to get a home charger but to be honest granny charging it is fine.

Occasionally I need to set it to  charge outside of the cheap octopus period (on the tarrif that gives five hours charging a night) but 95% of the time it’s fully charged.

If you’re doing 100 miles a day, get a thousand pound charger. If you’re doing 20 miles a day stick with the granny and save a grand.

Seats and covers:

https://www.hatchbag.co.uk/volkswagen-id-buzz-2022-onwards

https://idkamper.com/product-category/seat-covers-mats-carpets/

Not got a Buzz yet, but bookmarked these for when I do. Let us know what you end up getting!