Software: Anyone have timeline or a link to a post about the timeline for 3.0/3.1 release in the USA?

Manybees said:

you chose instead for the most black and white statement

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To be fair, you chose to read it in the most black and white interpretation possible.

(like me) modified every so the sentence, in native English anyway, did not claim every ID.4 owner shared the same frustrations...only those that were like VW Dave; ie, those who are frustrated about specific features missing and/or broken that have been promised to be addressed for well over a year now.

That said, if you aren't using features like scheduled charging, which are at least some of the bulk of the source of frustration for such owners, then how can you realistically respond in a fair way to that criticism? If my gas flap was stuck closed and I couldn't drive my car, it wouldn't be a legitimate rebuttal of yours to state that you haven't needed to fuel up in six months because you work from home so there's no problem from your perspective. Regardless of whether you want that feature to work, it's a critical function for battery management. I've explained elsewhere why external EVSEs that have scheduling features don't suffice because the charge curve relies on scheduled charging.

Every customer who does not have a working scheduled charging feature is experiencing permanent battery degradation at every charge. Now, you may not notice the degradation depending on your driving habits but that's not relevant to whether it's happening--only to whether you care that it's happening.

Manybees said:

I’m not sure what people are comparing the ID.4 software to, so it’s hard to know what others expect.

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At this point, US ID4 owners can compare it to non-US ID4 owners. From my perspective, customers have been very clear on what they expect given their base expectation is clear and accurate communication from VW, which has been their failing point in regards to US customers for decades so that's unlikely to get better despite earlier proclamations to the contrary.

Manybees said:

As I’ve said multiple times in this thread and elsewhere, I’m talking about my experience with and my usage of the software and hardware in my car. I’m not trying to universalize my experience or deny that others might have both real and perceived issues. My suggestion is that anyone who is experiencing problems might want to consider doing something similar and not trying to universalize their negative experiences by making blanket statements about the experiences and perceptions of all other owners. There are other owners who are satisfied with the car as-is, as @Huey52 points out.

For someone who depends on scheduled charging, I understand the frustration of the broken feature -- and I’d be frustrated too if I used that feature. It’s simply shameful that this is not fixed yet and that VW hasn’t communicated about when a fix is coming. The communication from VW about this and other issues has been just awful. But to me the poor communications issue is a separate issue from use of the actual software in my day-to-day use of the car.

I’m sorry that you’re having a bad experience. Good luck.

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Everyone needs scheduled charging to function properly. It's not a choice--not a convenience feature--it's a critical element of battery maintenance. Anyone arguing that they don't need to use it so it's not a problem doesn't understand the technology underpinning what it's doing.

That said, my response wasn't to debate the merits of scheduled charging. It was to point out that you chose to read that sentence in a particular way and argue against it. You doubled down here for some reason. That member was not universalizing his experience. That sentence, correctly read in native English, does not convey what you read from it. I explained that already and shouldn't have to explain myself again so I'll leave it at that.

As for my troubles, I sold my ID4 a few months after owning it. I've already done this rodeo with VW multiple times over the past couple decades. As I mentioned elsewhere, I sold the last of my VWs last month and that is the end of my relationship with VAG for the rest of my life other than my now falling stock positions. I guess if we're offering suggestions to one another my suggestion to you would be to listen to the experiences of long-time VW owners about our perception of what and why the company does what it does.

Huey52 said:

I'm sorry but why do I need scheduled charging? I don't have an off peak rate provided by my utility.

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I've explained this in the past but that was a long time ago. I'll explain it here again. While people are focused on scheduled charging to limit charge times within certain pricing tiers, that's not why it's important to have. It's critical to proper battery management. Right now you charge your vehicle and it's a dumb charge--regardless of how "smart" and EVSE claims to be...they are all "dumb." The work of charging the battery happens within the EV--not the EVSE. It's just a fancy extension cord. A timer on the EVSE is a blunt force delivery of electricity to the battery pack.

A correctly working battery management system charges the system at the slowest, most effective and efficient methodology possible. In order to maintain proper battery conditioning, the vehicle needs to know when and how to set the charging curve. It can't do that without scheduled charging. Does that give you enough information or do I need to explain further? I'd rather dig up my old posts on the subject than re-type it all so if you'd like a deeper explanation I'll run a search on my posts and copy the info here.

It was a genuine offer from me--not snark. I'll search my post history and post back here.
[EDIT: here's one of my lengthier posts on the subject: Scheduled Charging YouTube;
also, since the current crop of owners have apparently opted to simply not use the feature, it's important to note that the issue I'm describing is a long-term concern. In the immediate, the issue was less about stopping the charge and more about starting one. Those of us who tried to use scheduled charging had to deal with the vehicle ignoring our charge thresholds (is anyone limiting their charge to 80%? Couldn't do that with scheduled charging...), charging at only a few amps, and sometimes it wouldn't charge at all rendering some people incapable of driving their ID4 to work the next morning.]

If you recall, I was initially excited by VW's promises that quickly devolved into skepticism by the 2nd month of ownership after I experienced similar shenanigans with the dealership in regards to repairing the ID4 as I've experienced with them in the past. After owners were promised a software update in summer (at the time, it was last summer) I started to mention that this was an old pattern of VAGs. I do think I posted to the board when I sold my ID4 that I would be permanently leaving the VAG family after I sold my remaining Touareg and ID4 after I figured out what we'd be getting into. At the time, I was feeling rather negative toward VW and asked for an account closure. You, and other mods, suggested I stay around so I did and check in from time to time.

In any case, the two decades of exclusive ownership is only in regards to my adult family life (wife, kids, etc.). Of course, I'm not counting growing up working on air cooled dubs with my friends, dad, and he with his dad growing up, as well. So a rather long history indeed! I'm not alone in saying the cars are awesome but the company sucks. Historically we've remedied this by servicing and repairing them ourselves. In this case, I was relatively certain I couldn't do that long-term so the vehicle had to go.

BrianFellows said:

charging at L1 and L2 speeds does not lead to any appreciable amount of battery degradation.

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You don't have the tools to look for it and apparently don't care even if it does happen so long as the included battery buffer doesn't alert you to the degradation. Those of us with the proper tools, however, can measure the degradation. Regardless, whether you find it "appreciable" or not is immaterial to the problem that exists.

Furthermore, since you and the person you're agreeing with don't use the feature, you don't know what is broken. That's one of the reasons I mentioned earlier your rebuttals aren't valid. If you tried to rely on the feature you would find it complicates much more essential functions of the vehicle than simply the time of day that the vehicle charges. It controls the charge thresholds, the temperature of the battery pack, and whether someone can even charge and make it to work or wherever they needed to be the next morning. If you still want to dig your heels in and defend a broken feature that you don't bother using, at least read the early experiences of those of us who didn't know it was broken and what was going wrong with our cars until we found out the feature wasn't working. It's not like VW told us the feature wasn't working and they'd come up with an update; many of us woke up in the morning to vehicles that had either overcharged, undercharged, or didn't charge at all. It took a while to diagnose what the heck was going on while dealership and VW stonewalled us. It's all historical at this point...freely available to those who are interested in what the actual concerns are rather than telling owners to suck it up.

wtatun said:

I don’t need it - OR - I do it on my own is a better way to say that. I don’t need the car to do it.

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If you think you don't need it, you don't understand what it needs to do OR you don't care about your battery's and/or your/your family's health. A properly working charge curve is critical to battery safety in addition to its long-term health. It is not possible to manually adjust the curve. The closest someone came to this was tricking the system into a departure time that wasn't when they were going to leave and even that was wonky but it was close enough for that member.

Furthermore, the fact that VW hasn't addressed this in over a year while promising a solution each summer since it was discovered points to a lack of dedication to addressing the US market, which was something they were vocal about when they were promoting the ID4.

If they aren't delivering on their own stated claims, that should give pause to anyone regarding long-term support of the vehicle in the future. This is the type of behavior VW has demonstrated to US customers over the past decades so it's an indication their company hasn't changed internally despite their claims otherwise.

The problem of "scheduled charging" goes far beyond and much deeper than simply charging between 10pm and 6am or whenever.

BrianFellows said:

Where is the example of a BEV combusting in a driveway that was not caused by a physical battery defect? Just saying it happened in a post does not make it true

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Welp, guess you win bud. Improperly charged batteries pose no safety concerns to consumers because I won't bother digging up any articles about electric vehicles exploding in people's driveways. /shrug

jgoodnough said:

Point me at any prior thread and I'm happy to read it there.

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You might find it helpful to read post #116, #118, and #120 here:
then you can skip to the end of the discussion to get to the more technical details of the conversation.

I'll answer the questions in your post after you've sifted through some of those data presented. The short version of my response would be that, while I don't know whether the BMS cannot function properly, it certainly isn't currently functioning properly. None of us know the extent of the problem but given that VW can't get a handle on it indicates it's either too deeply intertwined that they don't have a simple solution or they don't care enough about our market to develop one--possibly both are true. Furthermore, the BMS controls the pack relative to your individual usage patterns. If you have an undercharge, overcharge, or failed to charge condition the BMS has failed in its job. The scheduled charging feature surfaced these three conditions but we don't know if it's only limited to scheduled charges. In reality, we only know the charging logic is faulty. That's enough of a problem in and of itself but there's also no reason to believe the BMS is functioning correctly. That's just an assumption because people aren't experiencing problems. There's a sizable buffer in the battery that the end-user never has access too so your pack could be degrading much more than your UI is indicating.

As the batteries age they will surface weak cells. When that happens, and what the consequences will be when it does, is anyone's guess but it's not a mystery that it will eventually happen. Even just old batteries eventually experience this with a properly functioning BMS.

Huey52 said:

But getting back to specifically using scheduled charging (if it worked) or not wouldn't seem to be a battery health issue. There are plenty of times when we all charge that is outside of any desired scheduling, in fact for many prominently so.

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Scheduling a charge in and of itself is not a safety concern. That said, charging outside of your individual usage patterns will degrade the battery long-term. You already know this when it comes to not leaving it sitting around with less than 20% charge for very long or over 80% charge for too long. You are already familiar with those broad brush strokes. It will take more years and people in different environments to detect the longer term damage of either charging it too full in the middle of the night and leaving it that way for a few hours, leaving it uncharged for a few hours, or not being able to thermally manage it all day/night long in extreme cold or heat. It'll still degrade for you, just not as fast as those of us who live in the deserts and snowy regions.

The problem here is that scheduled charging doesn't work...and by that we mean it's faulty and overcharges, undercharges, and fails to charge. This isn't just about not being able to charge between 10pm and 6am or whenever. Read those specific posts to refresh your memory about all of the different ways in which this has reared its ugly head (I list four specific failures in post #120, the other two posts I mentioned were two different users explaining episodes that alarmed them).

When you have a faulty charging logic you have a safety issue. The scheduled charging presents two problems: it's both a broken feature that inconveniences users and degrades their cells over time and it's also clear evidence of faulty charging logic. How faulty? Well, we don't know and VW, if they know, isn't saying. If they do know what the problem is, it's strange that they haven't sent out a fix yet despite telling us for over a year that a fix was a matter of months away. Remember those updates that were going to come every...what was it...three months? How many have you received?

Do you remember the Kona recalls last year due to claimed faulty batteries? Well that didn't explain why this specific Kona burned up in Norway: Hyundai Kona Electric That Caught Fire In Norway Was Not Included In Recall

Hyundai never published their findings but this is what LG Chem had to say:
"LG Energy Solution said that the folded anode tab had nothing to do with the fires and claimed that there was a “misapplication of the BMS charging map.” Although the supplier did not blame that issue for the fires, it said Hyundai made an “incorrect application of fast charging logic, proposed by LG Energy Solution, to the BMS.” Depending on what Hyundai discovers in the recent Norwegian blaze, that hypothesis could come back to the table."

d287 said:

Anyway, I now understand the root of your confusion! The BMS won't alter its charge curve by departure time

Using my example above, if the BMS determines it will take four hours to charge to the set charging level, it won't then charge at half power if you plug in at midnight; it will just wait until 4am and tell the BMS to start charging.

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Again, I'm not confused. You created a straw-man--I wrote the BMS can't "correctly apply the charge curve" if it doesn't know the departure time (or ignores it) not that it alters it during a charge session by charge time.

If you want to continue having a good-faith conversation then read through the references I've provided multiple times in this discussion. Case in point: "if the BMS determines it will take four hours to charge to the set charging level, it won't then charge at half power if you plug in at midnight; it will just wait until 4am and tell the BMS to start charging."

The ID4 doesn't do this, which is the problem we've been discussing over the past year. Now, we can engage in a pedantic discussion over where that deficiency lies, whether it's appropriate to call it a faulty BMS or faulty charge logic (what I've been saying) that makes it so the BMS can't function properly...but I find it curious that you're digging your heels in over this minutiae that creates no functional difference for an end-user while not responding at all to this factually incorrect and downright dangerous claim that: "If a poor BMS created risk for battery fires," As an engineer, I'd think you'd want to correct that.

d287 said:

So, you’re going to call me a liar?

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You claimed that you've never seen any evidence of the charging limit being ignored even though you participated in a thread that described that exact issue. I also linked you to a thread where no less than three separate reports of members not being able set a proper charge limit as it pertained to scheduled charging. Maybe you read it, maybe you didn't--but you asked me for the link and I provided it.

I'm quoting your various posts across the forum. Members can assess for themselves the veracity of your posts.

Accusing me of making the conversation personal is pretty rich after I sat here and endured your condescension, multiple members posting flat out false claims, and then added in a sprinkling of snide remarks for good measure. As far the technological facts are concerned, you and I reached an impasse after you refused to correct someone claiming that a faulty BMS does not create a risk for battery fires, you straw-manned my points, and refused to acknowledge a difference between best practices of when to start/stop charging a vehicle.

Ignoring your pedantry for the sake of whatever is left of this conversation, being unable to set an upper charge threshold is yet another example of the faulty charging logic I've been describing in this thread.

That said, @JLo were you able to resolve your issue with setting an upper charge threshold?

d287 said:

PS: You are the only one I see on this thread spread FUD - trying to scare people that somehow not having scheduled charging would damage their battery

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Interesting edit...why post some facts when you can create another straw-man, right?
What I stated was that faulty charge logic carries inherent risks in the context of rechargeable batteries. The scheduled charging is one example of that faulty charge logic. Being unable to set an upper charge threshold is another example of that underlying, core issue. I also stated that ignoring all of these software features will eventually lead to cell damage.

I am most certainly not trying to "scare" anyone...most of the people in this thread are laughing and ridiculing those factual observations. Initially, I didn't even want to have this discussion; I explicitly stated in my first post that I was responding to someone else chastising someone for making an accurate post that these issues impact everyone regardless of whether those members care about the issues or not.

What I didn't say, but is also true, is that everyone should care regardless because these specific issues are harming ID4 adoption and that impacts everyone alike. When VW doesn't get their sales numbers they'll cut resources to software development and eventually pull their EVs from the US market like they've done with the past two they offered.