By Gary S. Vasilash
One of the things that isn’t often cited with regard to the forthcoming VW ID. Buzz is that it is a minivan. Yes, an electric minivan. But nonetheless the type of vehicle that has more than its share of people who say they’d never be caught driving one.
In the U.S. market, the brand that really brought the minivan to the market back in 1983, Chrysler, is still there with the Pacifica. There is a plug-in hybrid option available for the Pacifica.
Toyota has the Sienna as a hybrid-only minivan.
And there are the Honda Odyssey and the Kia Carnival, although these are ICE-only (for now, anyway).
Which brings us to what they’re calling an “MVP,” or “multi-purpose vehicle,” but which one glance at its configuration says “minivan”: the Volvo EM90.

Volvo describes it as having an interior design that makes it “your living room on the move.”
For years (hard to imagine that the architecture is 40 years on) minivans have always had the most versatile and capacious interiors among light vehicles.
Will electrification make them more appealing to customers such that people will be boastful, not sheepish, about that comparatively boxy three-row vehicle in the driveway?
One thing about the Volvo EM90, however.
It is being launched in China and there has been no announcement it is going to be available elsewhere.
Perhaps if the ID. Buzz becomes a hit in the U.S. market Volvo may offer the EM90 there, as well.
Perhaps.