Wow, had no idea this even existed until now. Looks like a pretty decent car for the price with a good amount of range, I would be interested to hear how well the lane keep and automation works. Congrats man!
There’s two versions of the lane keeping. One that’s meant as collision avoidance, and one that’s part of travel assist. When I test drove the 2021 version in the summer, I turned off the former during the test drive because of false “lane departure” signals it was acting on and applying inputs to the wheel when it shouldn’t. Much like my Outback, it gets a bit confused if the road surface isn’t what it expects, like when you might see paving stones used at larger pedestrian crossings in mixed-use areas that are starting to crop up where I live. The Outback would also nag me with lane departure warnings on roads with lots of sealed cracks. Need to see how well the ID.4 handles those.
Haven’t tried the travel assist feature at all yet. I’m a bit of a luddite when it comes to driver automation. Love adaptive cruise control though. Probably try out travel assist after some time getting used to the vehicle.
Software is the weak point in the ID.4 compared to something like the Ioniq 5. And VW has had some massive teething issues getting OTA updates going. That said, at least for the purpose of: plug in CarPlay, use Siri, drive from A to B, the 2022 fixed the quirks that bugged me about the software the 2021 had. So at least with the drives I’ve done so far, it’s been just as nice as the Outback to drive, only with 100+ extra HP and so much extra torque. Which is really all I wanted. Something like the Outback or Forester in EV form. And it has enough ground clearance for the sort of poorly maintained dirt/gravel roads I’d be using it on from time to time.
The OTA update issues are interesting though. It looks like they used standard 12V starter batteries in the 2021s, and then discovered that the process of the update can be a real problem on those batteries. So they are doing a service campaign to replace
all the batteries on 2021s with something better that can handle the long OTA update process (and will probably be better for EV use all up). But sourcing the batteries, getting service centers trained and ready, and shipping them out has apparently been a bit of a pain. The fact that VW is still hammering away at this to get it done so that the 2021s can get all the fixes the 2022/2023 got I think is a positive sign. Things got hard, and instead of just cutting their losses, they seem committed to making it work.
Also like the fact that the AWD comes with the wiring for a 7-pin trailer socket ready to go along with the mount for the socket (2023 includes the socket too, but it’s like a 10$ part off Amazon), and a hitch receiver. Also like that their hitch receiver is bolted to the tow bar, making it a simple process to switch it from a 1.25” to 2” receiver that can be done in a few minutes with a torque wrench. I’ll need to do that before spring so I can use my 2“ bike rack on it.
www.caranddriver.com
