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SOS Module woes - '24 model

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27K views 90 replies 18 participants last post by  dan.dillemuth  
#1 · (Edited)
UPDATE: Pulling the fuse and replacing it worked. SOS module is back online. Much easier than taking it to the dealership.

Hi.

I'm creating a thread to share info around this issue. I'm noticing folks on Reddit with the same problem.

I picked up my '24 in May, and the SOS module was down. The dealership got it working. It wasn't initialized properly at the factory. BTW, my dealership has been very responsive and excellent with these issues. My fear is that VW doesn't have a fix yet.

In September, the SOS module went offline. The green light went out, I have no access to the car through CarNet, and I get a PING! and notification every 2-5 minutes that the car doesn't know where it is. All highway assists still work though.

I brought the car in, and they got the module fixed by taking out the back seat (!), removing and replacing a battery or fuse in the module.

Two weeks later, the green light went off again, and I'm back where I started.

The long-term impact of this isn't terribly urgent. I use Carplay for navigation, and I can call SOS from my phone. I don't have CarNet access, so I can't see the charging level if I'm out of the car, but I don't travel much so ultimately, that 's not an issue. I realize that it "should" work, but I can at least live with these problems until there's a fix.

The short-term impact is that every time I drive the car, it nags me with this pinging notification that it doesn't know where it is. On the weekend we drove for two hours, and it's pretty annoying to hear that sound all the time.

The dealership shared a 1-800 number for CarNet, but when I called, I was quickly told that if the green light is off, it's a dealership issue.

So I would LOVE VW to fix this issue quickly. If it can't be fixed quickly, they really need to push a software fix to only alert with the PING! once per driving session, and then just with a message in the UI after that.

For now, I'm bringing the car in for the "take out the back seat" service the day before my next two road trips.

I do see fixes involving a fuse for earlier models, but I don't think this works on the '24. I may be wrong.
 
#2 ·
I do see fixes involving a fuse for earlier models, but I don't think this works on the '24.
What makes you think it doesn't work? Its simple to try it, pull fuse F19, wait 2 minutes, put it back in and wait 15 minutes. It reboots the module and the green light comes back on for me and many others. It has happened twice in 3 years on mine. On a 24 it should still reboot. Did you try it?
 
#4 ·
I have the same issue. Happened 4 times in past month. Only had the car for a month. Fuse 19 does reset the module and gets it back online and restores carnet app functionality.

I had it in to the dealer last Friday to investigate. They did something’s including fuse 19 but also opened a ticket with VW to reset carnet remotely, the next day it was reset and I had to re-login from the car.

Still don’t know if it has solved it.

This isn’t just and id.4 issue, seems to be more a carnet issue. I believe the vehicles are not exiting transport mode correctly when dealer performs the pdi. There is a tech note for other vehicles in this regard and the solution is fuse 19 for 5 minutes to drain the battery/capacitor for the carnet module.

Kirk
 
#5 ·
I had this on my '21 when it was new - coincided with the date the free wifi hotspot trial expired. Reset with fuse 19 and it's worked fine for another three years...
 
#6 ·
My $0.02 CAD: I have this issue sporadically (every several months) and I believe the carnet module crashes, fuse 19 pull causes a reboot. I don't think its a PDI issue unless it is offline when you first pickup the car from the dealer.

It is irritating to get the warning beeps for the "Road Sign Recognition" when I have disabled speed warnings (settings) and other services are not available in Canada - in other words its warning me about nothing I want to use (and for the most part the sign recognition does continue to work). I do appreciate that when this happens the SOS/Nav is also not working correctly but interestingly enough you get no beeps or warning messages about that!
 
#7 ·
Tangential, but all VAG cars - and a few other manufacturers who use the same SOS module - have an issue in the Nordics. The SOS/GPS crashes intermittently. Underlying reason is the 3G network being taken down in favour of 4G/5G. For some reason this has lead to the SOS module crashing in locations with several cell towers in close proximity.

Long story short, even if the car says ”SOS module error - please contact repair shop” you can actually fix it by holding the SOS call button down for 10-15 seconds. Pop the cover, press and hold the big red button. May take two tries, but in less than a minute the car will try to force the call (just cancel from infotainment) and everything will work again.

Annoying, and a fix has been promised, but nothing concrete yet.

Might be worth a try on your end?
 
#8 ·
Additional comments based on the sos comment above: in Canada my observation is:

There are two indicators on the display: the signal strength of the “4G” carrier and the globe representing Carnet. Depending on where you are driving the signal strength can be zero and the SOS light goes off (presumably doesn’t work as no cell signal), but the globe stays lit and no error messages. All goes back to normal when signal is returned.

However all the errors start to occur when the globe goes off - and I haven’t yet seen it go off while the signal strength is above zero.

After pulling fuse 19 to reboot carnet I have seen the globe light up again but it sometimes takes a while for the signal to return.

I will try the sos button trick next time I have the issue but I suspect that one as stated is due to the cell carrier and not a carnet module crash.
 
#13 ·
I called the dealership to say that I'd fixed the issue by pulling the fuse, and they recommended keeping my appointment in case it goes out again. Apparently the first thing they tried last time was the fuse, but then had to proceed to taking out the back seat to get to the module because that didn't work. Perhaps there are a few issues going on here.
 
#14 ·
Just curious - did you have a free WiFi hotspot trial and did it expire around the time the module stopped working?
 
#16 ·
I find that when I go north of Battle Ground, Washington the SOS light goes off. When I head back toward Battle Ground going south, it comes back on. I think that it has something to do with the strength of the cell phone signal that is built into the car. When I first saw it happen, it did freak me out. However, after observing it and starting to recognize the behavior of the light, I realized that there is something else going on. I don't know if this is related to your situation or not, but it saves me from having to pull out and reinsert fuses.
 
#20 ·
It happened twice for me while charging, but not again last time I charged. I was wondering if that was a constant. I just put a Wi-Fi MESH station in my garage, right beside the car. I was wondering if that was interfering somehow with the car's networking. Grasping at straws.

At any rate, the SOS module hasn't gone offline since I pulled the fuse last week.
 
#23 ·
Unlikely: since a fuse pull resets the module and things go back to normal it’s not likely the network. My belief (based on nothing but 45 years in IT) is that the code in the Carnet module or the cell network module crashes every so often; a reboot is needed to clear the condition. I also think it’s a memory leak which is a common issue for programmers these days - not doing a proper cleanup every so often so eventually the software crashes. It sort of explains the long intervals between crashing on the ID4.
 
#46 ·
UPDATE: Unfortunately, the dealer could not duplicate the problem. In fact it didn't even happen once on my way over to drop it off. However, they found several sporadic faults in most of the modules for missing messages related to the Gateway module. They re calibrated and reset the Gateway module and no faults were returned. I have had no issues since. Fingers crossed.
 
#28 ·
I live in a rural area with spotty cell coverage. I get this all the time on my 22 when I go through dead zones, but it always recovers without a fuse pull. Sometimes it takes 10-15 mins to recover after entering cell coverage again. It does sound like there is a bug in the 24.
The hack way I’ve always used to help diagnose a memory leak is to reboot on a schedule. You could pull the fuse on a schedule that is more often than the failures. If it keeps happening it’s probably not a memory leak. I even know of some production software where rather than finding and fixing the memory leak it just gets restarted every day.
My wag is that @Bdub12 is on to something. The module struggles to recover from a network outage.
 
#29 ·
Yeah, after my fuse pull yesterday, I lost connectivity on a road trip. I read online that Rogers was having trouble after the storm. I bought a pair of pliers on the road and pulled the fuse in the parking lot last night. It has stayed on since. I drove back home without incident.
 
#32 · (Edited)
It´s also a good idea to get some spare fuses too. Fuse 19 is not only powering the GPS module, it´s also powering the driver binnacle. If something bad happend to the fuse, like getting damage while pulling it or it gets accidently dropped somewhere in the car and cannot be found, the binnacle will not power on. That can be quite problematic during a road trip. Don’t ask me how i know that !
 
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#33 ·
It´s also a good idea to get some spare fuses too. Fuse 19 is not only powering the GPS module, it´s also powering the driver binnacle. If something bad happend to the fuse, like getting damage while pulling it or it gets accidently dropped somewhere in the car and cannot be found, the binnacle won’t powered on. That can be quite problematic during a road trip. Don’t ask me how i know that !
Thanks for that!
 
#34 ·
As a counterpoint to @Bdub12 's observation: i have had the module go off line several times with no network interruption at all, and I have had it go offline when in a very poor cellular coverage area (ie no coverage for 15-20 minutes). In the former case, waiting things out doesn't help (one time I left it overnight to see if it would recover) but in the latter it recovers fine. So I have a hard time suspecting the cause is "recovering from an outage". @Moonstone 's comment about scheduled fuse pulls makes sense if indeed it is a memory leak like I think, however (for me at least) it is infrequent enough to just pull the fuse and wait 15 minutes when it happens rather than pull the fuse and wait when things are fine.
 
#35 ·
Yea I wouldn't schedule the fuse pull as a solution either, way too much hassle. I'd only do it as a diagnostic tool. Edit: unless you wanted to go to the hassle of wiring in a disconnect switch into the dash somewhere. Then you could just throw the switch once a month on exiting the car. HAHA kind of hacky but it might work.
 
#36 ·
Doing the fuse 19 pull regularly can be a hassle for sure. After pulling it 4 times in the first month of ownership and being told by dealers that there was no fix available, i’ve had enough and installed a switch.

Not too hard to do using an Add-a-Circuit fuse holder in place of fuse 19 and using it to add a toggle switch in the circuit.

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