No chargers, no plan — and miles of wilderness ahead: Road-tripping in Volkswagen’s all-electric ID. Buzz

From a young age, I knew what my favourite car was: the VW Bus. I loved the look, loved the simplicity, loved the promise of freedom it represented.

Years later, though not so old I’d no longer consider myself youthful, it was electric cars that piqued my interest. I loved the tech, loved the performance, loved the sense of driving something future-facing.

So imagine my delight when Volkswagen’s all-electric ID. Buzz hit the roads; a long-wheelbase, seven-seater reimagining of the classic Type 2.

The stage was set for a trip I’d been wanting to try for years: camping in an all-electric vehicle on Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula.

The Peninsula is true slice of American wilderness — nearly one million acres of protected parkland, from misty Pacific coastline to the snow-dusted mountain passes of Olympic National Park and Forest.

But in this terrain, how would a first-generation electric remake of an icon hold up?

Planning the unplanned

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I’ll admit: I’m not much of a planner. Booking the start and end of a trip is usually as far as I go. But if you’re heading off-grid in an electric car… that ain’t gonna fly.

Even as EV infrastructure improves, range planning is still a necessary step. A bit of time on ZapMap and Electrify America quickly taught me this region doesn’t exactly overflow with chargers. Eek.

The idea was to spend at least half the trip using dispersed campsites — unofficial spots with no amenities, just somewhere quiet to park up. If you know where to look, they’re all over. I use a great app called The Dyrt, which lists both official and wild camping spots across the US.

Combining charger locations and sites I wanted to visit, I sketched out a rough route:

With just enough of a plan in place, I set off from Seattle.

Hitting the road

Driving through Washington is a joy. The SR16 crossing the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the winding US101 along Lake…