{"id":12163,"date":"2022-07-21T08:22:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-21T15:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=12163"},"modified":"2022-07-28T08:25:37","modified_gmt":"2022-07-28T15:25:37","slug":"electric-bus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2022\/07\/21\/electric-bus\/","title":{"rendered":"Electric Bus"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

from The New Yorker<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The VW Bus Took the Sixties on the Road. Now It\u2019s Getting a Twenty-first-Century Makeover<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Once, it sparked dreams of community and counterculture. What\u2019s gained\u2014and lost\u2014when flower power is electrified?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0Jill <\/a>Lepore<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/
The new version of the VW bus, the Buzz, is about plugging in, not dropping out. Illustration by Klaus Kremmerz<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In 1976, at the tail end of the Ford Administration, hippies no longer hip, Sue Vargo and Molly Mead decided that they wanted to drive to the Florida Keys in a Volkswagen bus. They were best friends, in their twenties, living in a women-only commune in Massachusetts: muddy boots, acoustic guitars, mercurial vegetarians. They bought a beat-up VW bus, circa 1967, red and white, with a split windshield, a stick shift that sprouted up from the floor like a sturdy sapling, a big, flat, bus-driver steering wheel half the size of a hula hoop, and windshield wipers that waved back and forth\u2014cheerful and eager, like a puppy\u2014without wiping anything away. The bus had no suspension. \u201cYou just bounced along,\u201d Vargo said, bobbing her head. \u201cBoing, boing, boing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year, Volkswagen is bringing back the bus\u2014souped up, tricked out, and no longer bouncy\u2014as the ID. Buzz. \u201cID.\u201d stands for \u201cintelligent design,\u201d and \u201cBuzz\u201d means that it\u2019s electric. It might be the most anticipated vehicle in automotive history. Volkswagen has been teasing a return of the classic, iconic, drive-it-to-the-Grateful-Dead bus for more than two decades. (I\u2019m one of the people who\u2019ve been counting the days.) The company keeps announcing that it\u2019s coming, and then it never comes. Finally, it really is coming, and not only is it electric but it can also be a little bit psychedelic, two-toned, in the colors of a box of Popsicles: tangerine, lime, grape, lemon. It\u2019s on sale in Europe this fall and will be available in the United States in 2024. (One reason for the wait is that Volkswagen is making a bigger one for the U.S. market, with three rows of seats instead of two.) Volkswagen expects the Buzz, which has a range of something like two hundred and sixty miles, to be the flagship of a fast-growing electric fleet. The C.E.O. of Volkswagen of America said that the demand for the Buzz in the U.S. is unlike anything he\u2019s seen before. \u201cThe Buzz has the ability to rewrite the rules,\u201d\u00a0Top<\/em>\u00a0Gear<\/em>\u00a0reported in April, naming it Electric Car of the Year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[ click to continue reading at The New Yorker<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from The New Yorker The VW Bus Took the Sixties on the Road. Now It\u2019s Getting a Twenty-first-Century Makeover Once, it sparked dreams of community and counterculture. What\u2019s gained\u2014and lost\u2014when flower power is electrified? By\u00a0Jill Lepore In 1976, at the tail end of the Ford Administration, hippies no longer hip, Sue Vargo and Molly Mead decided […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12163\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}