Volkswagen Type 2 bus lined up next to the ID. Buzz
CNBC | Sydney Boyo | Andrew Evers
The “bus,” as many fans know it, is deeply ingrained in American culture and evolved into a symbol of protest starting in the 1960s.
“There was an unpopular war. There were conflicting ideas of what the American dream was,” said Damon Ristau, the director and producer of “The Bus” documentary. “That culture grabbed on to these vehicles.”
As counterculture movements spread through the states, the bus was aligned with antiwar protests and hippies, and even was used by civil rights activists to transport schoolchildren in the segregated South.
From 1950 to 2003, four generations of the Type 2 bus were sold in the U.S., with nearly 1 million total deliveries, according to VW. The last generation imported to the U.S. was the T4 “Eurovan” model.
“After the Eurovan, the minivan segment was sort of on the decline,” said Jeffrey Lear, product manager of electric vehicles for Volkswagen of America. “The van segment in the U.S. comes with a lot of baggage. There are a lot of feelings that come with buying a van.”
Worldwide, VW has delivered nearly 19 million Type 2 buses since its inception, including the T5 through T7 generations which are still being developed in Europe, according to the company. With the ID. Buzz, VW is hoping to change up the narrative.
“It’s our modern interpretation of what we believe a bus is like for the future,” said Lear. “We’ll never call this a van or a minivan from Volkswagen of America. For us, this is a new segment. It is the bus segment.”
“There are a lot of people that have been very excited about this day for over 20 years,” said Ristau. “It’s sort of a homecoming reunion.”
The North American model will have three rows, a maximum of seven seats and a 91 kWh battery, but VW hasn’t released any details on the range or price. However, it says the range is comparable to the ID4, which has a maximum range of 275 miles per charge.
Volkswagen’s ID. Buzz driving on the road.
Andrew Evers
“It’s larger than our ID4,” said Lear. “And since this is a larger battery, you would think it’d get more. But when you take a look at this thing, you realize that it’s much larger and much less aerodynamic than an ID4. So, I think you can expect probably a hair under that figure,” he said.
In the past, the bus has been built all over the world, from VW’s native Germany to South Africa and Australia.
Currently, VW is assembling the electric ID.4 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but it told CNBC it has no plans to extend that production to the ID Buzz, even with the Biden administration’s EV incentives.
“For now, we plan to just keep it in Europe,” said Lear.
Production will take place at VW’s Hannover, Germany, plant and it will be exported globally. Europe has already started presales of the model and the North American version is expected to arrive at dealers by 2024.
Watch the video to learn more about the evolution of the VW bus and its electric future.
The replica of the ARM is an electronic chip board during a collaborative ceremony launching a partnership between Malaysia and ARM Holdings in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on March 5, 2025.
Hari Anggara | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Arm Holdings shares dipped as much as 9% in after-hours trading on the company’s first-quarter earnings results Wednesday.
Here’s how the company did, compared with estimates from analysts polled by LSEG:
Earnings per share: 35 cents vs. 35 cents expected.
Revenue: $1.05 billion vs. $1.06 billion expected.
The company said it expects second-quarter revenue in the range of $1.01 billion to $1.11 billion, which was in line with $1.05 billion expected by analysts tracked by LSEG.
ARM is a chip technology firm that sells architecture for making chips that power billions of devices, including Apple and Qualcomm‘s chips.
During the quarter, Samsung launched the Galaxy Flip 7 based on the Exynos 2500, built on Arm’s compute subsystem platform.
CEO Rene Haas said in an interview with Reuters that the company was “consciously deciding to invest more heavily,” suggesting the company is considering designing its own processors.
Cristiano Amon, CEO & President, Qualcomm, on Centre Stage during day one of Web Summit 2024 at the MEO Arena in Lisbon, Portugal.
Shauna Clinton | Sportsfile | Getty Images
Qualcomm reported fiscal third-quarter earnings on Wednesday that beat Wall Street expectations and provided a stronger-than-expected guide for the current quarter. Qualcomm shares slid in extended trading.
Here’s how the chipmaker did for the quarter ending June 29 compared to LSEG consensus expectations:
Earnings per share: $2.77 adjusted versus $2.71 expected
Revenue: $10.37 billion versus $10.35 billion expected
In the current quarter, Qualcomm said it expected $2.85 per share at the midpoint of adjusted earnings on $10.7 billion in revenue at the midpoint. Analysts polled by LSEG were expecting $2.83 in adjusted earnings per share on $10.35 billion in revenue.
Net income during the quarter ending in June was $2.66 billion, or $2.43 per share, versus $2.13 billion, or $1.88 per share a year ago.
Qualcomm’s most important business is selling chips for smartphones under its Snapdragon brand, including the central processor and modem for high-end devices made by Samsung. It also provides modems to Apple. Its handset chip business reported $6.33 billion in revenue during the quarter, just shy of Wall Street expectations of $6.44 billion.
Qualcomm expects to lose Apple as a customer for its modem business in the coming years. But the company has been working to diversify its business by making chips for other devices, including Windows PCs and Meta‘s Quest virtual-reality headsets and Meta Ray-Bans smart glasses.
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Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon highlighted the company’s work with Meta in a short interview on Wednesday.
He said that making chips for devices like Meta’s Ray-Bans smart glasses was a good example of the chipmaker’s AI strategy, which was to embrace “personal AI,” or AI applications that run on devices, not the cloud.
Qualcomm reports its Meta revenues under its “Internet of Things” division, which had $1.68 billion in revenue during the quarter.
Amon referenced Mark Zuckerberg‘s AI vision statement Wednesday that focused on “personal superintelligence,” saying “the upside we had in the quarter within IoT is what we do in with smart glasses.”
CFO Akash Palkhiwala said that Meta had stronger-than-expected chip consumption during the quarter.
On Monday, Ray-Ban parent EssilorLuxottica said that sales of the smart glasses more than tripled on an annual basis.
“Mark put out a video today, just with a very clear vision of how they see personal AI and super intelligence evolving, and we are a key part of making that division happen,” Palkhiwala said.
Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are powered by a Qualcomm chip. Qualcomm, Samsung and Google are working on smart glasses, according to Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon.
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Amon also said Qualcomm would start to provide data about how much its chip business is growing without Apple — about 15% this year, he said.
Qualcomm is also looking to expand into data centers and sell versions of its chips that can be used for deploying artificial intelligence, Amon said on a call with an analysts. He said that Qualcomm was already in discussions with a major cloud company — called a hyperscaler — to supply AI chips. He said that Qualcomm could start to see revenues in its fiscal 2028.
“While we are in the early stages of this expansion, we are engaged with multiple potential customers,” Among said. “We are currently in advanced discussions with a leading hyperscaler.”
The company’s automotive business has been highlighted by Amon as one of the biggest growth opportunities for the company, but in the third quarter, it grew 21% to $984 million, below the 24% growth rate of the company’s IoT business.
Qualcomm’s other major division is QTL, which includes licensing fees for technology that Qualcomm developed and patented, including parts of the 5G standard. Overall, QTL revenues rose 11% to $1.32 billion.
Qualcomm said it spent just under $1 billion on cash dividends and $2.8 billion repurchasing 19 million shares of its stock during the quarter.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg presents Orion AR Glasses as he makes a keynote speech during the Meta Connect annual event at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024.
Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters
Meta’s Reality Labs, the unit tasked with building the futuristic metaverse, continues bleeding money.
The social media company reported its second-quarter earnings on Wednesday and revealed that Reality Labs logged an operating loss of $4.53 billion while recording $370 million in sales during the period. Analysts were projecting that unit to post a second-quarter operating loss of $4.99 billion while generating $381 million in sales.
The Reality Labs division oversees the Quest line of virtual reality headsets in addition to the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, which are jointly developed with the French-Italian eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica. Meta wants Reality Labs to create cutting-edge products similar to the prototype Orion augmented reality glasses that could underpin a new, immersive computing platform.
But developing VR, AR and other new devices is an expensive endeavor, with the Reality Labs division logging nearly $70 billion in cumulative losses since late 2020. Meta in April said Reality Labs recorded an operating loss of $4.2 billion during the first quarter while bringing in $412 million in sales.
Although the Quest VR headsets haven’t become breakout hits, the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are showing signs of success.
EssilorLuxottica on Monday said Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses sales more than tripled year over year for the first half of 2025. The eyewear giant and Meta debuted in June the new Oakley Meta smart glasses, which is the latest product spawned from their partnership.
Meta said in April that an undisclosed number of Reality Labs employees who were part of its Oculus Studios VR and AR software unit were laid off.