Could you love an electric campervan?

The Volkswagen ID Buzz is a pretty car, though so innocent-seeming you would forgive it anything. It succeeds the equally pretty T2 campervan, the Betty Boop of 1950s vehicles. The T2 was so convincing – cars, like everything, vary in charisma – it is one of the most famous vehicles in the world, so much so that I can’t think of one without seeing Don Draper’s face. Iconic is a stupid word, but the T2 was iconic, and in testament you will pay £20,000 for the bones of one, though you shouldn’t.

But life is renewal, and here is the Buzz, which charms me. (I wonder if the name is supposed to invoke insect life. It is electric, a friend to bees.) The problem for those yearning for a T2 that works is the Buzz is not a campervan yet. VW thinks in decades, and this is an overture: the pre-campervan. For now, you can only dream of the Buzz with a pulldown bed and small fridge and stove – and which does not smell of mildew – and I do. I love the VW Grand California, but it is huge, with two double beds and a shower room: I am a nervous driver in a car. For now, the Buzz is an MPV (multiple purpose vehicle): electric car of the year 2023, and car of the year 2023. It is zero emissions, and parts of it are made of recycled ocean plastics. It conjures a future of Buzz calling to Buzz through idealised suburban streets, like Steven Spielberg’s childhood dreamscape, or clichés about Denmark.

It’s lovely to drive. You are as high as in an SUV, but with better visibility; it is easy to park – there are parking cameras, so you can spy on yourself – and comfortable. Its proportions are exquisite. It is tidy, responsive and almost absurdly shiny: a motorised ball-pit, something to covet, and bystanders adore it. Men (always men) walk over when I charge it, and peer through its windows, and enquire into its welfare, as if it were a baby that cost £60,000.

They mostly ask about charging it, which must be caveated, for fairness. I cannot charge from my home in west Cornwall, which is cheap and convenient, as I have a flower bed where a drive should be, and double yellow lines to the horizon. I have not driven to London in an electric car before, so I do not know how to negotiate the charging network, even though apps do it for you with a flurry of symbols that constitute a sequel to The Da Vinci Code. Car companies are not monopolies, and they cannot do everything for you: homogenise the network for your convenience, for example. Most importantly, if we do not stop using petrol, we will burn.

I am a fool, so I charge at McDonald’s near Hayle when the Buzz is 70 per cent full. This was the first error. I should have waited for Exeter and topped up at Bristol, as the delivery driver counselled, but I wanted a McDonald’s as much as you can ever want a McDonald’s. The initial error led to subsequent errors which translated to standing in car parks off the M4 in torrential rain at midnight, in some kind of wet, app-themed nightmare. It took me ten hours to get to London, and cost more than I expected, but it was my fault, and we will burn.

I was wise on the return, and there were no problems – at least until I decided to charge at Land’s End, which has two different kinds of chargers, on a whim. There was an empty Peugeot in the charger I sought, though it was 100 per cent charged. The dock allows you to spy on rival batteries and have revenge fantasies. I tried to pull the cable out, but it was locked in: only the driver can release it. Thirty minutes later she arrived in a different car. I asked her why she had taken the charger hostage. She said she had received no notification that she was fully charged because there is no app for it, and she was therefore blameless. The car park by Land’s End is more dystopic than a car park off the M4 in midnight rain, though the Buzz, a joy-maker by nature, smiled. It is no coincidence that I think of Don Draper and his seduction. It will sell.