VW ID Buzz van is a platform for its self-driving efforts

“The ID Buzz will be our first L4-capable vehicle,” said Alex Hitzinger, chief executive of VW Autonomy, a new entity that was announced during CES 2020.

In a small roundtable meeting on the sidelines of CES, Hitzinger told Electrek, “It’s a nice form factor as a people mover, and we’ll have an ID Buzz cargo that also can be used for last-mile e-commerce delivery.”

In other words, Volkswagen’s search for use cases that make sense for expensive self-driving development is an ideal match to the ID Buzz’s size and shape. The electric surfer van that we want for fun will have a parallel life as a self-driving mobility-as-service shuttle and local delivery robot.

“You have a use case where you have very high utilization of your asset, and therefore you can cope with the high cost of the system, and you still have a good business case,” said Hitzinger.

He pegged the current cost of an autonomous system (above and beyond the vehicle platform) at $100,000 or more, depending on what sensors are used. But within about 10 years, it will be about $10,000, with continual cost reductions in the next few years.

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