It's now been 5 months and 8000 miles since I picked up my ID.4. I hear that my dealer Fox Valley VW did the 2021 software upgrade/battery replacement work in only 10 hours, which makes me feel better about going in for the door handle recall on my 2023.

I am still learning new things in the interface!

 

Over the weekend I transported 24 metal folding chairs for a graduation party. I didn't want to pile them much higher for fear they would contact the glass. That's 3 rows, 8 chairs deep. Not bad!

The blue dash highlights and red door handle lights setting has stuck for over a week now, it seems like normally when I had just a single color it got set back to default more often.

Got the door handle recall letter in the mail, I suppose I should schedule that...

 

I made a template and then cut out the Coroplast gap fillers for the rear suspension cutouts. The right and left one are identical fortunately. I'll mount them with some screws into the existing aero panels and Gorilla tape.The panels have a convenient flange to drill some holes into. This should provide some probably unmeasurable aerodynamic improvements.

 

I think this is "best case scenario". 3.8 mi/kwh for 100 miles! Temps were in the low 80s, winds were very low, road were mostly Illinois flatlands. AC set to 76, cruise set to 63.

 

I bought this phone mount for the ID.4:

Pardon Our Interruption...

www.ebay.com

I really like where it allows the phone to be hung, to the left of the infotainment panel and mostly above the gear selector. Unfortunately it is a bit wimpy. The phone vibrates around and then the adhesive failed half way to work and it all crashed to the floor. I'm going to try to reinforce some of the bits and figure out how to make it more robust.

 

I finished adding the aero mods around the rear wheels and fixed the rattly rear diffuser. Details here: ID.4 Aerodynamics

 

I'm taking the ID.4.Red into the dealer today for the door handle recall and 10,000 mile checkup. They said they'd have a loaner available. I hope I don't have to be without my red spaceship for too long!

 

I think it took longer to drive back and forth to the dealer twice than it did for them to do the checkup and recall work. All done, no issues reported.

 

And why did it take me 6 months to figure out how to use the cruise control buttons? I have it figured out now but it was so frustrating to me because I didn't know that the speed up/down buttons have different function for a light press and a hard press.

• Swipe up/down changes speed in 5 mph increments
• Hard press changes speed in 5 mph increments
• Light press changes speed in 1 mph increments

Now that I know it's fine, but before that it was very frustrating because there is really no tactile difference between a hard and soft press, you just need to calibrate your fingers.

My loaner yesterday was a TAOS with 260 miles on it. OMG. It was hard to believe that they was designed by the same company. The two cars are night and day to drive, in the looks and in their controls. The throttle was both spastic and anemic. It had a radio. It was just a radio! The buttons... each button only did one thing! It had knobs!

 

I have had the ID.4.RED for 6 months and 9500 miles now with no issues other than the usual UI bugs. I still do almost all of my charging at home. I'm keeping a spreadsheet showing costs for charging the car and mileage and calculating the savings vs my CR-V that averaged 30MPG of gas. 6 months of savings are 723.50, wow!

 

This one hurts my brain a little.

 

Of course we had to take my car to fill up the stinky gas cans for the MIL's mower.

 

We are taking a vacation trip to Door County, WI in August, from west of Chicago. According to ABRP we can do that with only one 30 minute stop for charging at the West Greenfield Electrify America in Milwaukee. The hotel we are staying at has both Tesla and J1772 charging so hopefully everything works as planned and this vacation will have no fueling costs (except home charging). I bought a Tesla destination charger just in case...

Has anybody had any good/bad experiences at the Milwaukee EA site?

 

After 7 months and 10,500 miles, the car is still like new. I'm no longer finding anything frustrating with the user interfaces as I now know the "right" way to do things and have shut off features that I don't use and I find annoying.

The passenger seat still leans back randomly and there is a bit of creaking from the left rear suspension at low speed that will need to be chased down at some point.

 

I like to have my phone visible while driving, even though I use Android auto 99% or the time. I was using a vent mount which worked fine but I'd prefer to have the phone mounted high enough to use it's camera like a dashcam if needed.

Here's my latest solution:

It uses parts from several mounting systems, fortunately they are all compatible. I also had to shorten and re-glue the extension arm part.

 

I was out and about today and decided to do a fast charge at the new Electrify America chargers in Algonquin, IL. They still don't show up on Google or the ID.4s maps when searching for some reason. Lots of free spots and all seemed to be working. On the way out of the parking lot another ID.4 exactly like mine was charging!

 

We took a trip to Door County, WI from home which is out in the country west of Aurora, IL. After some great and trepidation about the ability to make it up to the great north with the Milwaukee EA down, we went for it and had no problems. I charged to 95% at home and charged again from 77% to 97% at an EA in a mall parking garage by O'hare airport. Last charge was at a Chevy dealership with a 50 kw DC charger in Port Washington.

It took 50 minutes there to get it back up to 95% and then we arrived in Egg Harbor, Wi with 35% to spare. Our hotel has L2 chargers.

 

Gills Rock, Door County, WI

The L2 charging at the hotel worked fine and the next leg of our journey takes us to Clinton IA. We are currently charging at a Genesis dealership in Appleton, Wi. They have a free Chargepoint DC charger. After some frustration trying to initialize a charge it turns out that you have to sign up for a Chargepoint account, and enter your credit card to allow you to initiate the charge. Got it figured out and now charging at 53kw. Charge stop two and final for this trip is at the EA in Madison.

 

There was one out of four EA EVSEs available in Madison. The others had another ID.4, an Audi E-tron and a Bolt on them. My ID.4 charged at 63kw on a 150 kw unit. The other cars were charging below 50kw, even on the 350kw units. That wasn't fast enough to get me up to 80% in 30 minutes so I ended up paying $1.85.

After dark I almost hit a deer on the rural Illinois roads. I braked from 60 down to near zero to avoid it. The tires screeched and I got a bit sideways but avoided the deer. The brakes work well!

Made it to Iowa with 28% to spare!

 

TLDR; We made it home, no huhu.

Total trip mileage including transporting granny, 1125 miles. Total energy costs, including charging at home a couple times, about $10. Saving as compared to my previous car, the 30 mpg CR-V, about $120. Saving compared to the 20 mpg Highlander that we were considering taking because of the Milwaukee EA issue, about $200.

The downside? About 2 hours of waiting for charging during the entire trip, and some anxiety about route planning charging at random EVSEs at dealerships.

Much of the anxiety was due to ABRP. I couldn't figure out how to replace a charger it chose in the middle of a trip with another one and because of that had to use it as a general estimator, not a route planner. For instance it would not allow me to choose the EA EVSE in Madison, Wi. It kept routing me to a Shell EVSE.

 

It's now been 8 months and 12,300 miles since I brought home the ID.4 and a new goal has been achieved. My fiance finally drove my car! She drove it from Iowa to our home west of Chicago. After she got the seat and mirrors adjusted she immediately had issues with the lane following, so we turned that off, then she didn't like that it coasts forever in D mode, so we switched to B mode and she liked that better, then she didn't like the slow response of the gas pedal in Comfort mode so we switched to Sport and she thought that was more normal. Whew! After all that she actually liked driving it though getting her to admit it may be tough. And now today she said that she would like a Tesla if it wasn't associated with Musk. I think I may be converting her to the dark side!

 

Took a trip to Pig Minds brewery in Rockford. Good beer and they have EVSEs! Well, Tesla EVSEs, but I got to try my new Tesla adapter! It worked well. Apparently the Mach-E dude got to try his adapter too.

 

I kind of like this. It's subtle but changes the car's character.

 

I don't think I would have done that.

 

And now I see this 2024 GTX! I'm not sure I like the blacked out wheels but it's different...

Screengrab

 

That looks good to me.

 

Ever since my trip last weekend which included a charge at the Bloomington IL EA station the temperature and ambient lighting settings have been resetting nightly. Previously they randomly reset every week or two. I'm going to try rebooting the infotainment unit to see if that helps.

L2 charging from the dryer outlet at Mom's place