When the original Kombi VW van was introduced in 1949, it spawned variations. These included a crew cab and a pickup truck. It made sense, since the tooling existed, to do variations, just as automakers have done for decades. Tooling and development are very expensive, doing variations is the proverbial drop in the bucket. So we’re not surprised to learn that VW has applied for a patent for a pickup version of the ID.Buzz. 

A VW ID.Buzz pickup is like a version of the Kombi Transporter from the 1950s

The original Kombi pickup debuted in August 1952. With fold-down bedsides, it was a single cab version of the Transporter. A crew cab with room for six followed. But it was still capable of hauling cargo in the shorter bed. The ID.Buzz pickup is a reinterpretation of that same model. 

The two hottest configurations of vehicles today are the SUV and pickup. Since the ID.Buzz has the SUV part covered, with just a bit more tooling, VW now has a pickup, too. The patent shows what is essentially the same sketch as shown for World Design Day in April. It called the sketch an “unseen draft” during the ideation phase of the ID.Buzz design development.

Does VW make a pickup truck now?

Right now it is ramping up production of its new Amarok pickup, which is a joint development with Ford. The upcoming Ranger will be Ford’s version. So making the Amarok available in the U.S. would make it one of many in this segment. That includes the Nissan Frontier, Toyota Tacoma, Chevy Colorado, and so on. 

But a pickup version of the ID.Buzz would be creating an entirely new pickup segment, a hard concept to create. But this would be easy for VW, again, because most of the tooling already exists. And VW has made it known for a while that it wants an electric pickup for the U.S. in the near future. 

VW has already said it wants to have an EV truck

We know that because former Volkswagen Group America CEO Scott Keogh said just that. Calling it the “chance of a lifetime” to make an electric truck pretty much tells you all you need to know. Keogh has now been named head of VW’s Scout brand. But the timeline for an electric Scout is years off. The ID.Buzz pickup can happen soon.

For now, another variant of the original Type 2 transporter, the windowless commercial van, is available in Europe. So it would seem that VW can follow the original transporter’s spinoffs as a guide to expanding its current electric passenger van ID.Buzz. We can expect to see the ID.Buzz in the U.S. sometime next year. We would expect the pickup version to debut a year to 18 months later. 

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