Tour 5 77 Kwh battery.

I won't Buy Another Car Where The Screen Controls So Many Functions !

It will be hard to keep this review short so bear with me.

First off, the software is a joke, it's as if VW hired Screen addicted Teenagers to design these cars, and this is happening throughout the VW range, not just the ID range. Make no mistake, the surge of touch screens in cars is as a result of our own addiction to screens, car manufacturers know this addiction and they use this to save a lot of money because they know people will see a screen and love it and they can copy the software and screens and put it in their different models, copy paste job done without having to spend money on designing different cockpits for each model. No buttons, no analogue clocks, this costs more money, basically ergonomics suffer badly because of touch screens, phone use is banned in cars but yet car manufacturers are allowed make cars with touch screens that require a lot of use while driving to do basic things like change AC settings, air flow, blower speed, Auto mode doesn't do what I want at times.

I actually much prefer more traditional interiors and won't buy a car like this ID3 again, the screen should only be for media and sat nav. All VW cars are mostly this way now but not unique to VW, though other manufacturers do separate some stuff like climate controls from the screen.

Voice control is useless at best, there's no buttons or knobs for the radio so you ask it to turn on the radio, instead of turning on the radio is asks what station you want, you tell it and after maybe 15-20 seconds it tells you it can't find it or it turns on something completely different. So already you missed most of the news headlines....... so then you have no choice but to go through menus to find the radio, absolutely absurd and highly distracting while driving !

You can say "hello ID" and the car will listen for your commands such as turn up the heat etc but the kids can do this from the rear seats and they drove me insane turning up and down the heat and messing with other stuff so I had to disable it........

If android auto or car play is on you got to get out of it go to a menu to get to radio to find a station you want, you can go through the stations one by one via the steering but you can't see what station you're on or going through without being in the radio menu, seriously it's so infuriating sometimes I want to rip this screen out of the car and smash it.

VW promised OTA updates and it didn't happen and now we're told v 3 is the last major update for this generation id3, so much for OTA updates, it's a disgrace, car is outdated already as newer cars already have slightly better software but it still won't make up for the lack of dedicated buttons and knobs.

The steering controls are haptic and not real buttons and it feels very unnatural, I don't like it.

Using the touch screen itself is a pain being right handed I have to use my left hand and it's not as accurate as using my right hand of course but you might think well I controlled a car with my left hand before but with a screen it's different as you have no feedback and easily hit off the wrong setting unlike feeling a physical knob you know twist right temp goes up, twist left fan speed goes down etc. Auto climate doesn't always work fantastic in any car. Sometimes you got to access manual controls.

Getting to the EV end of things, it has so far been reliable, I bought it in October 2021 it has 48,000 miles and no issues, first service is at year 3 regardless of mileage. This is amazing.

I have had an issue with one of the matrix headlights fogging up, after the 4th headlight it remains unresolved, these are very expensive lights.

Matrix headlights are great on unlit back roads, the auto dip isn't really auto dip, it adjusts the beam away from other drivers but will keep the ditch lit up on high beam, this is really great for visibility if someone is walking on back roads at night. Sometimes I need to use the manual dip as it can't react fast enough when a car just appears from a bend but it's no big deal.

Stereo isn't the best, and believe it or not in a car costing 41,000 Euros after grants VW did not install speakers in the rear doors, this is absolutely disgraceful.

Interior quality is poor, there are nasty plastics everywhere, something you'd expect in the caddy van not a 41,000 Euro car. The doors rattle when the stereo is cranked up, it's bad !

Sometimes the infotainment freezes requiring a reboot while on the road driving, touch screens should be banned in cars. This means you can literally do nothing except drive, you can't turn up or down heat, change blower settings and have no radio or any audio system.

I can't count the amount of times I've had my eyes off the road to do simple things, it's dangerous but it's an issue now with most car manufacturers.

I got travel assist and it does well to keep the car in lane requiring me to grab the wheel every 15 seconds or so, bright sunlight and glare on roads from the sun can effect it, it's a driver aid after all not a driver replacement you do need to pay attention because the Adaptive cruise won't prevent an accident if the car in front steps hard on the brake, no car will because they can't read the traffic in front, it works well most of the time but I would like to know how many rear end collisions these systems cause as people are playing with their phones thinking the car will prevent an accident !

The car pulls the steering and bings and bongs as you're driving along, this is just one major annoyance that car drivers of most manufacturers have to endure today which gives them a few more points in the NCAP score but costs us a lot of money ! You can turn this off in a menu of course but have to do it every time you turn on the car.

I'm driving EV since 2015, it's nothing special any more, range is around 350 ish Kms It could do 400 on slower back roads all the time.

Recharge times at public charging are not fantastic, 30-50 mins depending on charger specs, this is on DC or rapid/Fast chargers, here in Ireland the infrastructure isn't fantastic and many years away from being as good as petrol stations as it is in most countries, if everyone changes to EV where is the power going to come from if in Ireland we're struggling to power data centres ? What about charging queues ?

If we didn't have a diesel Outlander there's no way I would have an electric car, they're too restrictive and I think it's an absolute disgrace that the E.U , Ursula von der Leyen needs to get with reality because there are many millions of Europeans with no home charging and she wants to force them in to lower range cars that take a long time to charge or to face charging queues, E.U citizens need to be allowed to vote for the President of the European Commission !

Would I buy another EV ? no, not until range is as good as ICE and recharge times are no more than 10 mins 10-80% and the cost comes down substantially and when there are more normal sensible interiors return.

I'm never going to finance a car via PCP again, it's a fools game and you risk getting another PCP after 3 years because you will probably not want to pay the balloon to own the car you've been driving for 3 years, monthly payments are attractive but the balloon comes back to bite at the end of the day so I would advice people to keep their money and save and put it in a long term investment plan because PCP is a bottomless pit and car manufacturers, dealers and finance companies are the ones laughing.

From now own I will buy older cars. I had the chance to drive an Opel Crossland with 1.2 Turbo petrol, I was very impressed with that little engine. I might go for a similar engine with say Kia, because they offer 7 year warranty or maybe Dacia, But I loved driving the little petrol, it sounded good and I liked it, I miss the internal combustion engine after so long and gears, EV is ultra boring after so long and the depreciation and recharge times when away from home on public chargers gets old fast, you will not save money with an EV and cheaper EV have even worse range and often worse recharge times.

Cars in general have got far too expensive and it appears only Dacia are offering lower priced cars and good for them, I'd nearly save the 18,000 Balloon payment on the id3 in October for a brand new Dacia or put maybe 7 K more for the Jogger. Much less tech and I am suffering screen and tech fatigue from the id3 lol, we need more basic cars with less tech to keep costs down.

Thanks for reading, I know it was long and I hope it will be of use to some people.

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