New electric VW Transporter makes us yearn for an EV California campervan

I’m going to shoot straight with you: I don’t fully understand Volkswagen’s commercial van lineup — it is dizzyingly complicated. Today, VW announced the next generation of its commercial Transporter family will introduce an all-electric option in panel van, Kombi (dual purpose), dropside, and Caravelle (passenger) layouts.

This is all well and good, and it sounds like these vans will all be based on a shared electric drivetrain platform with the Ford E-Transit Custom family. That means a 74kWh battery good for around 230 miles of range and a maximum output of around 217 hp. Admittedly, these specifications aren’t going to blow anyone’s mind. It’s a utility van, and VW has a robust commercial vehicle business to support.

If you want to try and wrap your head around what VW calls the “Bulli” lineup: The T7 generation of VW mid-size vans will utilize three different vehicle platforms (MQB for the consumer Multivan, MEB for the ID.Buzz, and Transit Custom for the commercial Transporter).

This is where my knowledge of commercial vans pretty much ends.

What I do know about VW vans is that VW indefinitely delayed the California campervan version of the ID.Buzz earlier this year, and that was a Very Sad piece of news. VW cited excess weight as an intractable issue. (Specifically, that European driver’s license restrictions were to blame: European Class B licenses allow for operation of vehicles up to 3500 kg, but changes are under consideration to soon raise this limit to 4250 kg, so this felt like a nothingburger.) To me, the real issue here was likely payload — VW cited battery weight as a limiting factor in its decision to delay the California conversion for the Buzz, a vehicle which has a designed payload capacity of just over 1,200 pounds (550 kg) in the Buzz Cargo configuration.

With the new Transporter EV variants, VW will have an electric van platform with up to double the carrying capacity of ID.Buzz. The Ford E-Transit Custom is rated for over 2400 pounds (1100 kg) of cargo — allowing far more flexibility as a conversion platform. While the small-ish battery wouldn’t make it ideal for long trips, there’s at least the weight headroom to work with here for more ambitious total conversion layouts. Notably, VW has already teased a concept version of the T7 Multivan as a California campervan. But this concept was a PHEV with a 13 kWh battery, and VW doesn’t offer the Multivan in an all-electric configuration.

Does it seem likely VW will use this new Transporter configuration of the T7 for a California conversion on the consumer side of its business? I mean, probably not? But I can dream. Taking off my rose-colored glasses, it seems we won’t see the VW California EV vision become a reality for years. VW plans to move to its own dedicated EV van platform starting in 2028, so this sharing situation with Ford is likely meant as a holdover to give VW customers a medium-duty EV van option before the in-house electrified models launch later in the decade.