I'll start with my location-based charging issues that I've discussed elsewhere (see p. 4 of I regret I bought it). I'd like to thank @ericky and others who have helped me so far.

I have been unable to charge as intended using any of the 4 modes I know of when at my home location. Here is the status of my car and a description of the failures:

I set a charging station location in the Vehicle menu with a departure time set to 7:45 am each day, with no climate preconditioning. I then configured and selected a preferred charging time (12:05 am - 2:55 pm) corresponding to my low time-of-use electric rate. I prepared for charging like this on April 5:

• Car was at 30% SOC, and the car was at the selected charging location.
• I set immediate charging to 20% and scheduled charging to 80%
• "Unlock AC cable automatically" was selected
• I powered the car off (electric parking brake) and exited the car
• Car was unlocked
• I plugged in my EVSE which has charged several other cars flawlessly for 8 years

Case 1: Departure time + preferred charging time set as above:
The car did initiate a charge early the next morning (some time before 3am) but then stopped charging a little over an hour later. I inspected the EVSE and vehicle, and neither indicated any faults on their displays. I unplugged the EVSE, power cycled the car, and plugged the EVSE back in. The same thing happened: it started charging and stopped for no apparent reason after about an hour. I repeated the restart process, and eventually the car stopped charging at the scheduled 7:45 am departure time.

Case 2: Only departure time set:
I repeated the above process on April 14, but this time the car was at 40% SOC and I deselected the preferred charging time. Only the departure time was selected (unchanged from 7:45 am). The car did start charging sometime in the morning of April 15 until it stopped at the scheduled departure time of 7:45. That is the good news. The bad news is that it only charged to 69% SOC, not the specified 80%. I later downloaded the electric usage data from my utility (house has a smart meter), and I saw that the whole house was drawing only about 80% of the maximum power of the EVSE (i.e., ~19 vs 24 Amps of current) when the car was charging. The house drew the full power of the EVSE when I charged a different car with the same EVSE about 2 weeks earlier.

Case 3: Charge Now selected:
On April 15 I attempted to bypass the schedule and charge immediately by selecting "Charge now" on the car's "Goodbye" exist screen it displays when it is powered off. I exited the car and plugged in the EVSE. The green light came on and the car started charging, but it stopped about 1 minute later. I repeated this process with the same result, and this was confirmed by other ID.4 owners on vwidtalk.com.

Case 4: Charge immediately via Car-Net:
Car-Net shows the battery SOC and climate status. However, clicking "Start Charging" always gives a "Command Timeout" error - unable to communicate with the vehicle (10/10 tries; could be due to poor mobile network connection?)

Other owners in the vwidtalk.com forum replicated the exact same behavior in Cases 1 and 3 above. @ericy recorded his EVSE's power output and noted several short periods where the car stopped charging completely, and the car also did not draw the full available power from the EVSE then.

 

I will now post some progress in getting this resolved. I sent the information in post #2 (quoted here) to VW Customer care, minus @ericy's user name. They opened a case and requested that I take the car to my dealer's service department. I did that today. Here is the dealer's word salad describing the problem that was found:

"(charging system malfunctioning) Caused by control module missing data faults store in all the control and have vkms adaption faults store in control module"

and they did:
"performed control module software configuration and tested charging system with departure setting charge recheck OK"

They did create a new location at the dealership to test the issues, and they were able to get the car to charge from 69% (starting SOC) to 78%. The car was set to stop at 80% SOC but it terminated at 78%, pretty close.

I drove it home and verified that it would charge for more than a few minutes if I set the desired SOC to 90% and chose "Charge now" from the Goodbye / exit menu.

TL;DR Summary:

- My car can now start charging after "Charge now" is selected on the Goodbye / exit screen (Case 3) after the dealer's service department reconfigured its software. You may want to look into that if you have the same problem.

I have not yet tested whether Case 1 and Case 2 function better now; I need to get the SOC lower to try that. Case #4 still fails reliably (Car-Net).

 

You’ll probably find the solution to the problem I had interesting:

Charging fault: “Only Emergency charging”

Has anyone found a remedy to this problem? I’d rather avoid a trip to the dealer. I plug in the charger, it blinks green and red, and on the cockpit display it reads “Only emergency charging is currently available. Please see owner’s manual.” (The manual says “the charging connector is not...

www.vwidtalk.com

 

My FE has the same problems charging (stops short of goal, uses less current than expected, high variability in current during charging, etc.) ONLY when I'm using the in-car schedule.

When I set my charging schedule via my EVSE (ChargePoint Home Flex 40amp), it does NOT experience any of these problems - I get high current charging to 80% during my lowest rate TOD no matter what the SOC.

If I say "Charge Now", I get high current charging to 80%.

The caveat for this is that I must keep our key fobs away from the car during these times because either key fob being near the car causes something in the vehicle to click and act like it is interrupting some of the vehicle's thinking process (is it time to charge? do I charge now? kind of like that hyper cartoon dog that can't make up his mind about the cat or the food and slobbers over everything).

If we are in/out of the garage with either key fob after setting the schedule it is not unusual for me to come out in the AM with the charge port light solid red and no charging occurred during the night.

 

I don't have my car yet and never owned an EV. Are the charging glitches only when the car's software is set on a schedule? Do you have to set a schedule or can you just plug it into the wall and it charges like a smart phone would? Thanks

 

In my case, problems only with in-car schedule - you can treat it like a cell phone if you want.

 

That sounds right. With no schedule and no preferred charging time, I can tell the car to charge to 80% and plug it in and it will charge quite reliably and stop at the correct spot.

Where we are, the electricity rates are the same at all hours, so there is no advantage to trying to configure it to charge in the middle of the night. I might plug it in late in the evening, so it happens to charge at night, but that's my choice. Although I suppose on a summer evening, charging at night means the car is less likely to need to run the AC compressor to keep the battery cool.

It is a lot easier to double-check if you have a smart EVSE (I have JuiceBox pro 40) - this lets me get graphs that show the actual power delivered to the car as a function of time.

 

Thanks everybody for corroborating these issues.

My peak electric rate is $0.48 / kWh 4 pm - 9 pm and the off-peak rate is $0.17 / kWh (midnight - 3 pm), so I have definite incentive to charge off-peak. My previous 2 EVs could do this fine with 2 different dumb EVSEs, but alas my new (and improved?) ID.4 fails pretty badly.

 

My peak electric rate is $0.48 / kWh 4 pm - 9 pm and the off-peak rate is $0.17 / kWh (midnight - 3 pm), so I have definite incentive to charge off-peak. My previous 2 EVs could do this fine with 2 different dumb EVSEs, but alas my new (and improved?) ID.4 fails pretty badly.

Somehow I am reminded of people I used to know who couldn't figure out how to program a VCR - they would sit up until midnight and then plug it in so the clock would be correct. Such people would stay up to plug in the car at midnight.

If you just set preferred charging time window without a schedule, what happens?

 

Thanks for the explanation! I did not know rates change in other areas depending on hours. Now this makes sense why it is so important for your charge scheduling to work properly

 

Switching to a Time Of Uuse plan also reduces load on utilities and reduces CO2 emission and other pollutants if that is important. My region (N California) has a fair bit of solar power, and that is one reason why the rates go up after 3pm.

 

I have had no issues using my home EVSE, but then I have rarely used it because an EA station is only seven minutes away. I have found though that getting the EA charge plug in is like wrestling an alligator! I have learned though why the fast charging cables are so big - they have coolant, antifreeze, circulating through them.

 

Wait - you do all of your charging with DCFC?
Are you concerned about the degradation of your battery capacity?

 

My ID4 does the same thing. It will not reliably charge to 80% by the scheduled departure time. The first time I plugged it in with departure time set, it did what it was supposed to and charged to car. Last night it started charging but stopped some time during the night and I only got to 53%. I didn’t have reduced AC charging selected, but maybe the car behaved as if I did? Who knows? 🤦‍♀️ Have you all been contacting VW with these issues? It seems a software update will be necessary if many of us are having the same issues. Tonight I’ll just try manually plugging it in and starting the charge.

 

Having reduced charging current selected should not cause your car to stop charging prematurely. I notified VW of my problems via email to VWCustomerCARE@vw.com and they opened a case for my specific issues FWIW. I suggest that you do that too.

I don't have a smart EVSE, but I can download my electric power usage data in 1 hour increments from my utility company account. That let me see that the car was not drawing the full available power of the EVSE and I could see more or less when the charging stopped prematurely. I passed than on to VW also.

Please do keep us posted re. how the immediate charging works out. I haven't tried that yet for a full charge.

 

Might be worth including the rated charge rate of the EVSE being used in the findings. I wonder if there is any negotiation done with the EVSE when first plugged in. Could be that the internal logic is assuming the max 11kw charge available and erroneously basing its calculations on receiving the max power.

 

There is some negotiating done with the EVSE when first plugged in - I can hear relays click in the car and EVSE click, and the EVSE indicator lights change. My experience is that if the car does start charging in advance of the departure time, then the start time would be sufficiently early to reach the specified SOC IF the car drew the full power of the EVSE. My utility data show that the car does not draw the full power of the EVSE though - varying from ~30-90%. I measured that on different time scales with 2 different EVSE (one is 5.8 kW, the other 9.6 kW).

 

I am having this exact same problem and have emailed them. Thank you for providing the email address! Please keep us updated!

 

Thank YOU for also writing VW! I will send you my case number in a private message so you can tell VW that your car and my car have the same problem. I encourage you to reference this forum thread as well.

 

I have also experienced problems with the ID4 time of use programing for charging the battery. I ended up removing the time of day setting and used the 'immediate charge' setting. And my EVSE is a basic one. So, no way to set the car to charge at night, except to manually plug it in late at night :-(

 

Same issues and contacted VW customer care.

 

I've had the same issues (Id.4 Pro S RWD) and I've contacted Customer Care as well!

 

The Mach-E is also havng some issues with charge curves as well. so here's hoping that VW and Ford will iron out the kinks soon.

 

Also having the same charging problems and have notifed VW.

 

Thank you @Chuck and @heavyt for reporting your issues to VW. I have sent you a private message with my case number, and please include it when you correspond with VW to bolster the fact that many or all cars have this problem.
I think that we should all inform VW of all the open cases for this issue in order to inform them that this is a widespread problem. I'd be happy to include your numbers as well in my correspondence when you get them.

 

Thank you @Chuck and @heavyt for reporting your issues to VW. I have sent you a private message with my case number, and please include it when you correspond with VW to bolster the fact that many or all cars have this problem.
I think that we should all inform VW of all the open cases for this issue in order to inform them that this is a widespread problem. I'd be happy to include your numbers as well in my correspondence when you get them.

I should report it as well - I definitely saw the issue myself.

 

More visibility for the problem never hurts.

 

Same issue here with in car scheduled charging, reported it as well. Hope they take action soon.

 

I tried a different experiment last night. I configured only to have preferential charging between 11:55PM and 3AM, but not scheduled charging. When I first plugged in, it wasn't drawing any power from the EVSE, which seemed normal enough. Starting SOC was about 50% or thereabouts, and charge limit was 80%.

This morning, I found the car at 75% SOC, and the JuiceBox showed this data:

What was interesting was that it didn't start charging right at 11:55. It was almost an hour later when charging began, and it was going more or less right at full speed. But there was about a half hour where the power dropped to around 6kW. Can't explain that. But it did stop charging at around 3AM.

There were still momentary power glitches - drops to 0 every so often for reasons that are unclear.

It sort of seemed like the car was trying to anticipate how much charging would be needed to bring it to 80%, and delaying the onset of charging. But when it did charge, it was mostly going at full speed.

 

I tried a different experiment last night. I configured only to have preferential charging between 11:55PM and 3AM, but not scheduled charging. When I first plugged in, it wasn't drawing any power from the EVSE, which seemed normal enough. Starting SOC was about 50% or thereabouts, and charge limit was 80%.

This morning, I found the car at 75% SOC, and the JuiceBox showed this data:
View attachment 3178

What was interesting was that it didn't start charging right at 11:55. It was almost an hour later when charging began, and it was going more or less right at full speed. But there was about a half hour where the power dropped to around 6kW. Can't explain that. But it did stop charging at around 3AM.

There were still momentary power glitches - drops to 0 every so often for reasons that are unclear.

It sort of seemed like the car was trying to anticipate how much charging would be needed to bring it to 80%, and delaying the onset of charging. But when it did charge, it was mostly going at full speed.

Thanks for doing and reporting another useful test. Looks like your results are similar to the ones that @Sita8 got in post #31 in this thread for a similar situation - charging started by did not achieve the set SOC. Your Juicebox data are great and I encourage you to send them to VW at VWCustomerCARE@vw.com with reports of your problems.

I established a case with VW on this general problem and they had me take it in to the dealer's service department about 10 days ago. Further testing showed that the dealer's "software reconfiguration" (per the invoice) did not fix or change the problem. VW has asked me to take it in again and I'll report back after that.

 

Looks like those of us who are in variable rate areas really benefit from having a smart charger rather than asking the car to do anything thinking at this point. That's disappointing.

 

Perhaps - it helps a lot when you want a "second set of eyes" on the charging process, that's for sure.. But I gather that many models of EVSE are back-ordered at the moment.

I expect that this is a temporary situation until VW pushes out an update to correct this.

 

That's definitely the case. I couldn't find a single one that I would trust, though my list is basically juicebox, CC, and grizzl-e so that doesn't help. i ended up getting a grizzl-e because i don't have variable rates anyway, but i would have loved to get their upcoming smart version. I'm not touching anything that's not coming with a UL cert.

 

Tried a new local EA station (for me) at Arundel Mills, MD. Junction of MD295 and MD100.
At Live! Casino 😁. EA was my destination not the casino.
Started at 17% 125kW at 350 charger. Took 35 min to get to 80%

 

Is VW’s response to this indicative of total ignorance to the ID4’s numerous bugs? They really never noticed this in their own fleet of testing?

This makes me worried that many of the bugs we experience on our cars won’t be fixed for a long, long time. Instructing us to go to the dealer to have the same software reloaded is just a waste of time.

 

I assume and hope that the VW engineering team is indeed aware of the problem given that it is so obvious and widespread. My case manager claims to not know of any other similar issues, and I think / hope that is because the VW ticket system is too cumbersome with the customer care managers disconnected from the tech team. Having the dealers in the loop for diagnosing software problems like these only makes the chain less efficient in my opinion, but that is their current process.

Thanks again to all for reporting your cases. I'll relay the numbers to my regional case manager when we speak on Wednesday. Hopefully having a significant number of cases logged will raise the priority of fixing this particular problem. Lots of hope here.

 

I suspect that big VW is in fact aware. VWoA is basically a terrible company notorious for getting things about 85% of the way there and then just stopping. VW is a decent company that seems to take this launch very seriously.

 

Fortunately then that we'll be getting firmware updates originating from big VW and not VWoA.

I don't have off-hour rates so the scheduling flaw hasn't been an issue. I just plug in before going to bed (I still think it's best to go off-hour, so as not to add to local utility daytime surge). But I do appreciate that those with such a plan are missing out on savings and hope it is rectified especially for them soon.

 

fiehlsport said:
An EA station is being built near our home as well, so if I can't get my cheap nighttime charging working, I think I'll do the same!
I bought my FE and plan to use EV for the next 2 yrs and 10 mon. 4 miles very hard to beat it.