[Hi_Fi_Guy]

Just finished a road trip from Phoenix to Kansas City and back with a friend and his Tesla Model 3 performance. This leads me to ask a few questions about the info displayed by the ID4.

- Is there a way to see projected remaining miles/charge at a destination or multiple destinations along a route or at chargers? The Tesla interface does this and we found it extremely useful on the trip. Made Supercharging stress free with no worries along the route.

- Is there a way to get the ID4 to display ONLY Electrify America chargers? Whenever I have tried to bring up chargers in the Nav I am faced with a list of dozens of nearby slow speed public/pay chargers to sort through to locate the EA charger.

- The Tesla knows when you are about 30 miles away from a Supercharger you will be using and will pre-condition the battery for fast charging. Do our cars do this? Do they need to? Is there a way to initiate it?

I may have more questions for those who have owned their ID4's for a while and have more experience but these are the things that really jumped out at me during the road trip with the Tesla which could be useful for us as well.

 

[dougwmtn]

That would be nice, wouldn't it?
Here's hoping VW puts someone with a functioning brain on making the navigation/POI interface useful.

 

[Evillen]

That would be nice, wouldn't it?
Here's hoping VW puts someone with a functioning brain on making the navigation/POI interface useful.

How about just making many of the features actually useful, intuitive etc. I love my ID.4, but some of the stuff that was initially done just seems like it's more to create an appeal than it is for actual functionality, RE Car net. The only thing you can do from it is turn on the climate control, it blows my mind that the car can't even be locked from the app... it's one of the most basic functions that I think most cars have thenability to do... but not the ID.4...

 

[JPWhite]

The built in nav on the ID.4 doesn't do those things. Use A Better Route Planner which does the same route planning Tesla does. Use ABRP to plan your route and punch the next destination into the ID.4 nav.

 

[ChristophW]

The short answer is no to all if you are using the native tools.
However, since CarPlay and Android Auto are so well implemented you can use A Better Route Planner, or even the EA apps to plan and track your route. Short of preheating the battery, it will cover all items you mentioned. I believe nobody has found that you need to let the car know that you will DC fast charge to get the 125 kW charge rate at low enough state of charge, so that point is sort of moot.

In our ID4 I never use the native maps and routing, nor many of its other native features other than car status, and rely on CarPlay almost exclusively.

 

[Hi_Fi_Guy]

I agree with everyone mentioning apps that CAN do much of what the Tesla does natively and I was aware of those apps. I guess my point was after driving the Tesla and seeing what it can do I started thinking the ID4 could/should do some of those things as well. Especially for new owners who may not know about the apps and/or to help win over those shopping for an EV.

Don't even get me started on the Car Net app. It is a joke at best and when you compare it with all Tesla's app can do you will want to cry.

To be clear my wife and I are long time VW group car owners and we absolutely LOVE our ID4. I am not hating on ID4 nor am I a Tesla fan-boy. That said, after driving many thousands of miles in my friends Tesla I am rooting for VW to do better in these areas where they could definitely use improvement.

 

[d287]

I agree with everyone mentioning apps that CAN do much of what the Tesla does natively and I was aware of those apps. I guess my point was after driving the Tesla and seeing what it can do I started thinking the ID4 could/should do some of those things as well. Especially for new owners who may not know about the apps and/or to help win over those shopping for an EV.

Don't even get me started on the Car Net app. It is a joke at best and when you compare it with all Tesla's app can do you will want to cry.

To be clear my wife and I are long time VW group car owners and we absolutely LOVE our ID4. I am not hating on ID4 nor am I a Tesla fan-boy. That said, after driving many thousands of miles in my friends Tesla I am rooting for VW to do better in these areas where they could definitely use improvement.

Totally agree. Fantastic car, but please give us some improved software with regular updates. It’s just that that’s such a new ask for the worlds largest automaker who for decades has delivered cars then stopped thinking about them unless they need service…

 

[hilld]

You mean I can’t use car-net to summon the car to me. 😂

 

[EV-Driver]

Is there a way to get the ID4 to display ONLY Electrify America chargers? Whenever I have tried to bring up chargers in the Nav I am faced with a list of dozens of nearby slow speed public/pay chargers to sort through to locate the EA charger.

Yes, at least with Apple CarPlay. Using the Electrify America app on the iPhone, bring it up on CarPlay. Go to settings and you can adjust, using a filter, which stations you want to show on the map.

 

[johnwelch62]

The short answer is no to all if you are using the native tools.
However, since CarPlay and Android Auto are so well implemented you can use A Better Route Planner, or even the EA apps to plan and track your route. Short of preheating the battery, it will cover all items you mentioned. I believe nobody has found that you need to let the car know that you will DC fast charge to get the 125 kW charge rate at low enough state of charge, so that point is sort of moot.

In our ID4 I never use the native maps and routing, nor many of its other native features other than car status, and rely on CarPlay almost exclusively.

Thanks for the pointer to ABRP. Is it me, or does it seem to not have an up-to-date listing of charging stations? For example I know there are a few stations within a few miles of my Brother-in-law's house, but ABRP doesn't show them. Is there a setting that I may have wrong? In this case the charger is an EA charger.

 

[Hi_Fi_Guy]

Yes, at least with Apple CarPlay. Using the Electrify America app on the iPhone, bring it up on CarPlay. Go to settings and you can adjust, using a filter, which stations you want to show on the map.

Sorry for the misunderstanding. I am well aware of the various charging/route apps and Apple Car Play. The question was will the ID4 do this natively? And if not, then why not? It certainly could and should.

 

[izzyid4]

I was first time ev buyer and I rely on Apple CarPlay so much I was disappointed Tesla did not integrate it to the system. But as I learned how well it works with ID4 it was definitely a selling point. With that said electrify America’s app in CarPlay work well with routing your trip and works very well with apples own maps.
I could have gone with Tesla for my first electric but they are just all over socal and now hertz is using them as rentals. I just want something different but familiar at the same time.

 

[Erhard]

Just finished a road trip from Phoenix to Kansas City and back with a friend and his Tesla Model 3 performance. This leads me to ask a few questions about the info displayed by the ID4.

- Is there a way to see projected remaining miles/charge at a destination or multiple destinations along a route or at chargers? The Tesla interface does this and we found it extremely useful on the trip. Made Supercharging stress free with no worries along the route.

- Is there a way to get the ID4 to display ONLY Electrify America chargers? Whenever I have tried to bring up chargers in the Nav I am faced with a list of dozens of nearby slow speed public/pay chargers to sort through to locate the EA charger.

- The Tesla knows when you are about 30 miles away from a Supercharger you will be using and will pre-condition the battery for fast charging. Do our cars do this? Do they need to? Is there a way to initiate it?

I may have more questions for those who have owned their ID4's for a while and have more experience but these are the things that really jumped out at me during the road trip with the Tesla which could be useful for us as well.

Just search in the navi system for
150kw
That brings up mainly EA

 

[Tigerfan1345]

App Finds, Controls and Pays for Charging EVs | PYMNTS.com

Volkswagen's electric vehicle is supported by a new app that helps owners manage charging and other functions.

www.pymnts.com

If read……it’s coming.
It will be here when it’s here.

 

[ChristophW]

I rely on Apple CarPlay so much I was disappointed Tesla did not integrate it to the system. But as I learned how well it works with ID4 it was definitely a selling point.

One could say the lack of CarPlay and Android Auto support by Tesla is a detriment. My gut says that in the long run the mobile OS companies will keep the upper hand in car infotainment, because 1) we use our phones so much and know them extremely well and 2) Apple and Google are really good at what they do. It’s hard even for Tesla to match that.

 

[Islander]

One could say the lack of CarPlay and Android Auto support by Tesla is a detriment. My gut says that in the long run the mobile OS companies will keep the upper hand in car infotainment, because 1) we use our phones so much and know them extremely well and 2) Apple and Google are really good at what they do. It’s hard even for Tesla to match that.

There's also the convenience of planning your road trip on your phone (say while watching Bjorn on YouTube), as opposed to sitting in the car and doing it.

 

[JPWhite]

Totally agree. Fantastic car, but please give us some improved software with regular updates. It’s just that that’s such a new ask for the worlds largest automaker who for decades has delivered cars then stopped thinking about them unless they need service…

The first Tesla vehicles did not have the "Range Assurance" software you experienced.
Range assurance was introduced in 2015 three years after the first Model S was delivered.
So yes VW need to examine what the competition are doing and at least match navigation capability, even better exceed the competitions capability.

 

[M.B]

Another issue with the navigation system is that it’s often way too detailed. Do I really care whether there is congestion 3 miles off my route? This isn’t even the worst screen I’ve seen. Sometimes it’s hard to identify the route within all that clutter. It does reliably know when roads are closed though, probably better than Google maps.

 

[jgoodnough]

App Finds, Controls and Pays for Charging EVs | PYMNTS.com

Volkswagen's electric vehicle is supported by a new app that helps owners manage charging and other functions.

www.pymnts.com

If read……it’s coming.
It will be here when it’s here.

This article is a shining example of phone-it-in trade journalism. They mention We-Connect as if it's the App everyone who buys a VW gets as their vehicle interface, even though it's not available in the US. Then they switch to talking about Car-Net without another mention of We-Connect. And they list functions that Car-Net does NOT include while saying it does. What I want to know is why did we in the US get a hobbled Car-Net instead of We-Connect? The fact that ID.4 owners in other countries get a functioning We-Connect App with expected features and the US customers don't is curious. Is this all about manufacturing chip shortages and software incompatibilities? Or did they just decide to short US customers because someone in marketing said it's too hard for Americans to understand?

 

[d287]

This article is a shining example of phone-it-in trade journalism. They mention We-Connect as if it's the App everyone who buys a VW gets as their vehicle interface, even though it's not available in the US. Then they switch to talking about Car-Net without another mention of We-Connect. And they list functions that Car-Net does NOT include while saying it does. What I want to know is why did we in the US get a hobbled Car-Net instead of We-Connect? The fact that ID.4 owners in other countries get a functioning We-Connect App with expected features and the US customers don't is curious. Is this all about manufacturing chip shortages and software incompatibilities? Or did they just decide to short US customers because someone in marketing said it's too hard for Americans to understand?

Heck, I’m curious why my 2019 Golf (which had CarNet, albeit through a 3G modem that isn’t supported by Verizon after next year) can show me where it is on a map, lock and unlock its doors, honk its horn (if I can’t find it), show me gas gauge level, and let me send destinations to GPS, and my almost $50k new car can do none of those things …