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ID.4 Winter meltdown error & nearly stranded

3775 Views 35 Replies 20 Participants Last post by  SparkGal
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Hi all, I've owned a 21 FE which I traded in for a 23 AWD Pro S when we moved to rural northern NY. I have snow tires. I know the Id4 quirks well, and have been mostly happy with my car. Because of my experience this weekend, I'm not going anywhere remote, at least not on snow or gravel, where the traction/AWD systems could go haywire. Sorry, its a long one.

My wife and I went out on a plowed forest service road for a hike. As we approached the trail, I started getting lots of error messages (frankly, I'm used to that in ID4), but the car still drove and didn't behave strangely.

I parked, and then decided to repark, but the car wouldn't move. About every 5 attempts of getting out, and sitting back in, the car might move a few inches, then die. We figured out that reverse seemed to have more luck, but not much. We did not have reception and we felt panicked and stranded.

I walked 2 miles to get reception, called VW customer care and they called a tow truck. The guy showed up 2 hours later and said 'he didn't trust his chains' to get him on the road, which again, we easily drove on before breaking down. We had our dogs, and there wasn't enough room for all of us in the cab. He gave my wife a ride home, and she was going to come back with our Tiguan. I painfully joked that I might use it to tow the Id4 out. When they got home, he told her that since VW wouldn't reimburse him because he didn't tow us, we owed him $100. Not VWs fault, but come on!

Meanwhile, back at the trail, I had time to kill so I walked back to the ID4. About 4 hours had passed since breakdown. For kicks, I put my dog in the car, put it in reverse and it started up. I drove home. All the error messages had gone away.

We were not in deep snow, and any AWD could have easily handled this. I have a dealer appointment tomorrow, and VW customer care called me today to check in. To his credit, the VW care guy sounded shocked and promised to stay in touch.

My only takeaway thought is that if I had a wrench, maybe I could have been able to disconnect the battery to reset it? But seriously, this was not OK.

1) ESC (electronic stability control) error. Did not get a pic of that one, but also tried disabling/modifying ESC in settings, but it was frozen.
2) Error: Drive System: hadn't seen this one before. I did once get the electrical system not functioning on my '21, not sure if this is an updated message for '23.
3) All Wheel drive system is limited. Please modify your driving style. This felt especially like a punch to gut. Like, I bought an AWD for snow traction.
4) And a TPMS error, for good measure I guess ;)?

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I've been toying with the idea of giving up my buggy FE for a '23. You've reminded me that VW has miles to go yet.
I have never had this happen myself, but I know to “reboot” the car you need to lock it and wait till the park icon on the dash goes out. Once that happens you can get back in. It normally takes about 10 to 15 min.
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It is your fault, you should have "modified your driving style!"

Seriously, and still we have people on this forum claiming iD4 is a better built car than Tesla.
Hi all, I've owned a 21 FE which I traded in for a 23 AWD Pro S when we moved to rural northern NY. I have snow tires. I know the Id4 quirks well, and have been mostly happy with my car. Because of my experience this weekend, I'm not going anywhere remote, at least not on snow or gravel, where the traction/AWD systems could go haywire. Sorry, its a long one.

My wife and I went out on a plowed forest service road for a hike. As we approached the trail, I started getting lots of error messages (frankly, I'm used to that in ID4), but the car still drove and didn't behave strangely.

I parked, and then decided to repark, but the car wouldn't move. About every 5 attempts of getting out, and sitting back in, the car might move a few inches, then die. We figured out that reverse seemed to have more luck, but not much. We did not have reception and we felt panicked and stranded.

I walked 2 miles to get reception, called VW customer care and they called a tow truck. The guy showed up 2 hours later and said 'he didn't trust his chains' to get him on the road, which again, we easily drove on before breaking down. We had our dogs, and there wasn't enough room for all of us in the cab. He gave my wife a ride home, and she was going to come back with our Tiguan. I painfully joked that I might use it to tow the Id4 out. When they got home, he told her that since VW wouldn't reimburse him because he didn't tow us, we owed him $100. Not VWs fault, but come on!

Meanwhile, back at the trail, I had time to kill so I walked back to the ID4. About 4 hours had passed since breakdown. For kicks, I put my dog in the car, put it in reverse and it started up. I drove home. All the error messages had gone away.

We were not in deep snow, and any AWD could have easily handled this. I have a dealer appointment tomorrow, and VW customer care called me today to check in. To his credit, the VW care guy sounded shocked and promised to stay in touch.

My only takeaway thought is that if I had a wrench, maybe I could have been able to disconnect the battery to reset it? But seriously, this was not OK.

1) ESC (electronic stability control) error. Did not get a pic of that one, but also tried disabling/modifying ESC in settings, but it was frozen.
2) Error: Drive System: hadn't seen this one before. I did once get the electrical system not functioning on my '21, not sure if this is an updated message for '23.
3) All Wheel drive system is limited. Please modify your driving style. This felt especially like a punch to gut. Like, I bought an AWD for snow traction.
4) And a TPMS error, for good measure I guess ;)?
Really scary situation.
By the way, did you try to turn ESC off? I was playing with pull down menu on my 23 Pro AWD and there is a shortcut which says ESC OFF. I added it as shortcut there but never had a chance to test it and hope I will never need it as well.
Yikes, that sounds awful. I totally relate - in the 1,000'ish miles since I've owned the car, it's been somewhat common to get random error messages that appear and then disappear. When we got some snow here in Oregon, the car decided to just not show the instrument cluster at all. Just totally blank, so no idea how fast we were going. The next day it was fine. This car reminds me of having a computer with a bad RAM chip where you just know it's going to fail again, you just don't know how bad it will be or when it will strike next.
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It is your fault, you should have "modified your driving style!"

Seriously, and still we have people on this forum claiming iD4 is a better built car than Tesla.
Lol have you not seen all the issues Teslas have? Have a Model 3 and it has had plenty of issues that have not been fixed by Teslas piss poor service team.
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Lol have you not seen all the issues Teslas have? Have a Model 3 and it has had plenty of issues that have not been fixed by Teslas piss poor service team.
What sort of issue comparable to this? Car won't move due to slight snow?
Really scary situation. By the way, did you try to turn ESC off? I was playing with pull down menu on my 23 Pro AWD and there is a shortcut which says ESC OFF. I added it as shortcut there but never had a chance to test it and hope I will never need it as well.
I did suspect that ESC might be playing a part, but unfortunately the ESC menu setting was disabled while the errors were going. I did not know about a pull down option, though as you said I hopefully won't be able to confirm it's emergency use. Good to know and I'll add it as a shortcut just in case!
I would not have paid the tow driver. He was contracted to do a job and if he couldn't do it that was on him.
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I've been toying with the idea of giving up my buggy FE for a '23. You've reminded me that VW has miles to go yet.
You might be better off keeping your "devil you know" FE, especially with another year of free EA. But yes, VW obviously has miles to go wrt software. The pause in v2.1 update gives the community pause.
It is your fault, you should have "modified your driving style!"

Seriously, and still we have people on this forum claiming iD4 is a better built car than Tesla.
... and yet many have no issues, to wit @Manybees recent post elsewhere (one of the many usually silent majority):
I've had a 2021 AWD Pro S with the 2.1 software for 13 months and about 16,000 miles. I've had zero issues with it, either software or mechanical, and I just love how it drives. It's spacious inside and is well built overall.

The car does have some quirky design decisions with some interior controls, but I got used to them within hours/days. I keep hearing complaints about "the software" from others here and elsewhere, but it's perfectly adequate for my uses. I use Apple CarPlay 95% of the time, so the ID.4's built-in nav and media playback software is prettty unfamilar to me.

Take my comments for what they're worth, but also take negative responses here and elsewhere with a grain of salt, knowing that social media and Internet forums skew toward negativity and the airing of grievances. If you can, drive the car yourself and come to your own decision. Only you really know what you're looking for in the end.
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Hi all, I've owned a 21 FE which I traded in for a 23 AWD Pro S when we moved to rural northern NY. I have snow tires. I know the Id4 quirks well, and have been mostly happy with my car. Because of my experience this weekend, I'm not going anywhere remote, at least not on snow or gravel, where the traction/AWD systems could go haywire. Sorry, its a long one.

My wife and I went out on a plowed forest service road for a hike. As we approached the trail, I started getting lots of error messages (frankly, I'm used to that in ID4), but the car still drove and didn't behave strangely.

I parked, and then decided to repark, but the car wouldn't move. About every 5 attempts of getting out, and sitting back in, the car might move a few inches, then die. We figured out that reverse seemed to have more luck, but not much. We did not have reception and we felt panicked and stranded.

I walked 2 miles to get reception, called VW customer care and they called a tow truck. The guy showed up 2 hours later and said 'he didn't trust his chains' to get him on the road, which again, we easily drove on before breaking down. We had our dogs, and there wasn't enough room for all of us in the cab. He gave my wife a ride home, and she was going to come back with our Tiguan. I painfully joked that I might use it to tow the Id4 out. When they got home, he told her that since VW wouldn't reimburse him because he didn't tow us, we owed him $100. Not VWs fault, but come on!

Meanwhile, back at the trail, I had time to kill so I walked back to the ID4. About 4 hours had passed since breakdown. For kicks, I put my dog in the car, put it in reverse and it started up. I drove home. All the error messages had gone away.

We were not in deep snow, and any AWD could have easily handled this. I have a dealer appointment tomorrow, and VW customer care called me today to check in. To his credit, the VW care guy sounded shocked and promised to stay in touch.

My only takeaway thought is that if I had a wrench, maybe I could have been able to disconnect the battery to reset it? But seriously, this was not OK.

1) ESC (electronic stability control) error. Did not get a pic of that one, but also tried disabling/modifying ESC in settings, but it was frozen.
2) Error: Drive System: hadn't seen this one before. I did once get the electrical system not functioning on my '21, not sure if this is an updated message for '23.
3) All Wheel drive system is limited. Please modify your driving style. This felt especially like a punch to gut. Like, I bought an AWD for snow traction.
4) And a TPMS error, for good measure I guess ;)?
Every time I read a post like this it always ends up being a 21 FE. Me on a 2022 have some concerns but so far it's only been carnet being terrible. Glad you are at least safe but I will be adding a wrench to my mobile kit just in case.
I have a 22 AWD Pro S and have been driving in severe snow and hills all winter with no problems (220" of snow at my house so far, over 650" at the ski areas). So I doubt this is something inherent in the car's design. That said, I sometimes feel like I may have hit the jackpot in getting one of the last cars produced in Germany for the US market. All the experience of a couple years of production and none of the teething problems of a new model year on a new production line. Zero problems in 5K miles so far.
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Every time I read a post like this it always ends up being a 21 FE. Me on a 2022 have some concerns but so far it's only been carnet being terrible. Glad you are at least safe but I will be adding a wrench to my mobile kit just in case.
This happened to a 2023 model. Read again.
Feels like the least problems have been with the 2022 model ID.4s.. maybe cause there are just so few of them most likely. Feel like the 2023s built in US have a lot of first year on the assembly line problems. Where the 2022 built in Germany has the benefit of being the 2nd year german-built assembly line cars and got the software update the 2021s didn't have. Best of both worlds.
More likely the software does not behave correctly for many border line cases. It will take several years (in case of VW decades maybe?) to fix all these cases.
This happened to a 2023 model. Read again.
Well damn I read that too fast. I am quite curious to see what was needed for repair in this instance.
Just wrapping up my service appointment. Dealer says they found a lot of faults, but no hard faults that require service. I've asked that they open a ticket to VW for some additional consultation with an engineer. I actually had about 40k of pain free miles on my FE driving though Buffalo/ Western NY winters, aside from the common infotainment issues. I've driven my '23 a ton in the snow, often through the Adirondacks, and it handled admirably. Just disconcerting that now some combination of faults happened that led it to essentially shut down it's drive system, and they can't explain why. I'm not eager to go out and buy a Tesla - or any other EV - as a replacement. Thinking of going Luddite and getting an old stick shift AWD or 4wd. Maybe Something dumb with knobs for controls, and a mechanical shifter to put it into neutral, lol.
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Just wrapping up my service appointment. Dealer says they found a lot of faults, but no hard faults that require service. I've asked that they open a ticket to VW for some additional consultation with an engineer. I actually had about 40k of pain free miles on my FE driving though Buffalo/ Western NY winters, aside from the common infotainment issues. I've driven my '23 a ton in the snow, often through the Adirondacks, and it handled admirably. Just disconcerting that now some combination of faults happened that led it to essentially shut down it's drive system, and they can't explain why. I'm not eager to go out and buy a Tesla - or any other EV - as a replacement. Thinking of going Luddite and getting an old stick shift AWD or 4wd. Maybe Something dumb with knobs for controls, and a mechanical shifter to put it into neutral, lol.
I mean I would be lying if I didn't miss keeping things simple stupid. Half of the forum will be gone tomorrow if the infotainment was replaced with an iPad. However the red exclamation to me are hard faults so I would get a second opinion. @VW TECHNICIAN
It is your fault, you should have "modified your driving style!"

Seriously, and still we have people on this forum claiming iD4 is a better built car than Tesla.
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