Sparklebeard
***
I posted a review of my experience going from 2016 SEL to 2019 SEL in another thread, and JT suggested I post it as its own thread for visibility. Here it is!
The Tale of Two Handsome Boys
Upgrade experience from ~24kWh e-Golf to ~36kWh e-Golf
Range
The obvious point of difference is the range to a full charge. For me this has been incredibly impactful, as on the 24kW battery I could not get to San Francisco and back without having to stop and charge. I couldn't drive to the beach without having to drive very conservatively up the mountains to make sure I wouldn't be stressed getting home. I CERTAINLY couldn't decide at the beach that I'd like to drive to a different beach and see if I can find one with better conditions, unless I also planned to make sure I could get to Half Moon Bay or Santa Cruz to charge to get home. Getting to Sacramento was scary, though I did it. Driving to Los Angeles was just not feasible in any world. Most weekends if I was going to go out and explore a bit (still somewhat new to living in the Bay Area and there's so many beautiful places to go!) I would stop to DCFC during the day. I didn't mind doing it, and stopping to charge has never been a GIANT pain point for me, rather I'm just concerned about frequent rapid charging the battery, and the longevity issues that could arise.
With the 19, I think I have DCFCd maybe twice since I've had it without changing my driving style. One of which was when I had spend a day driving around doing errands, then in the evening, spur of the moment drove up the peninsula to compare shiny new e-Golves with 2016golfse. The second time was when my husband and I fanged it over the mountains and went to the beach, then decided to cruise down to Santa Cruz at California speeds, and we stopped at the Whole Foods to pick up some ingredients to bring home for dinner. I probably could have made it back to San Jose without charging at that point (GOM said 55mi) but I did not want to strain the battery going up 17 as the SOC dropped lower and lower, so I plugged in for 10 mins just to bump up enough to ensure the battery would be happy.
I am planning to drive to Bakersfield to visit a friend, some time in the fall. That would not be possible in the 16 but I believe I can make it work with some efficient driving and with new electrify America charge stations. Bakersfield to Los Angeles is then a feasible next day hop. Additionally, since I so rarely DCFC for driving in the Bay Area now, I feel more confident that If I really REALLY needed to, I could chain DCFC to Los Angeles to get there in a hurry and the battery would overall not get too sad at me since it was such a rare occurrence. Would prefer not to test that out, though I believe European e-Golf drivers seem to consider back to back DCFC somewhat normal. Maybe their cars have different BMS. (as an aside, is the consensus still that 99 is the route to take in the e-Golf to get through the Central Valley?)
Performance and Efficiency
The 19 is actually a hair quicker. 16 is lighter and you can feel it, but the extra 15kW in the motor are impactful because you don't run out of steam until maybe 10mph faster than the 16, and it seems to handle freeways speeds more efficiently too. Where the 16 would give me about 3mi/kWh on I-280, the 19 gets me 4mi/kWh with the same driving style. Driving on local streets is a little less efficient than the 16; where I would average 5.4mi/kWh on my stop start local street commute in the 16, I see 5.0 in the 19. I have been able to achieve 6+mi/kWh in both by driving with a hypermile style but in most situations I just can't be bothered because its fun to drive, and the Bay Area has a LOT of expensive cars that are slower off the line than my car, and contain men with fragile egos that I can bruise by dragging them at stoplights in my soyboi EV. But I digress. In reality, the times when the efficiency matters most (cruising at 50+ to cover large distances quickly), the 19 is an improvement, and the regressions in efficiency happen when you're most likely to be parking at a charger anyway (local errands around home)
Regen Braking
The regen on the 16 is stronger and I would consider this one of the EXTREMELY limited number of regressions in the 2019. It still works, but the 16 very nearly felt like one-pedal driving. I have to use the brake pedal more in the 19 than the 16, though it's still ok enough.
Headlights SEL specific
This is a significant area of improvement. The 2016 LED reflectors are some of the best reflector headlights I've used, but I had no idea what I was missing with projectors. I have a particular eye condition that makes night driving a bit more challenging than average and these headlights have given me so much more peace of mind back because I can actually SEE. I also had no idea how nice curve-assistant dynamic lighting was. When I drove the 16 at night recently it felt like the headlights were almost being swiveled AWAY from the direction of the curve even though they were really just pointing forwards. I've just got used to the lights always lighting my path, not just directly in front of me. I like the auto high beam feature as I've never had one that works so reliably before. I don't often drive where I need to use it, though. I do wish we could have the European version with the dynamic shutter.
Digital Dash SEL specific
This is a nice to have, but would never be able to justify the SEL upgrade for this feature alone! I REALLY like the digital dash as it makes my car feel modern, sleek, and cool. I like the way the information is presented and the ability to have maps in the cluster if I so choose. But its not a game changer. The analogue dials in the regular dash are very good, and the small display in the standard dash still carries almost all the same information as you can get in the center section of the digital dash. I'm glad I have the feature, but it's not one of the factors that I considered when I was evaluating the upgrade.
9.2" Discover Pro infotainment SEL specific
Bizarrely, the e-Golf SEL is the only Golf in North America to get the 9.2" unit. Even the R gets the 8". Its high resolution so you get a different UI in CarPlay that shows more information than the 8" screen in the SE or in the 16 SEL. Its a hard-cover touch screen rather than the soft type in the older units, though its an absolute fingerprint magnet. I got a tempered glass screen protector with oleophobic coating and its helped a lot. Was $12 and you can't see that there's anything installed on the screen unless you're looking for it. I miss the physical buttons from the 16, though the 19 isn't too bad. I have to press HOME, then press the equivalent soft-button to the old hard side buttons. I rarely fiddle with it while driving though so it's not a major problem overall. The colour screen is much nicer so it makes up for it.
Seats
The seat cushions seem better padded. I at first thought this was just because my 16 was preowned so I never knew what it was like new and not sat on, but I've read a few people mention that 15 and 16 mark 7s have a less dense foam core than the newer ones, so perhaps its true?
Driver Assist
ACC is a big improvement over regular cruise control, and the e-Golf gets stop-start ACC which feels pretty magical. It's terrifying at first because its nearly impossible to trust a computer to stop the car in time, especially when it feels like its coming in hot. Eventually I started trusting it once I realized that not once had it even had a near miss. Its amazing for the commute when the traffic is just crawling along and I'm tired and don't want to pay attention to micro adjustments of the vehicles speed. Absolutely still requires awareness of the situation but it makes stop start traffic far less annoying. The blind spot monitors have been useful, particularly at night when its a bit trickier to resolve distance in the reflections. It would be nice if it had the option of a sound when a car entered the blind spot, but it doesn't. I ended up changing the wing mirror blinker LED part to a smoked part so block out the little turn signal square light because it was a little confusing having two lights of the same color in my peripheral vision mean different things.
Automatic Emergency Braking may actually have already saved me from a collision. There's a freeway ramp, Stevens Creek Boulevard onto 85N in Cupertino, which takes you to a ramp to I-280E, with a bit of spaghetti merging that has to happen because California. I was making the maneuver from SCB to I-280N, and saw a nasty collision occur on the main carriageway of 85N, over to my left. It distracted me and I did not see that the traffic heading to the 280 ramp that I was following had slowed to a crawl. I was alerted to it by the car slamming on the brakes and screaming at me. I was able to gain control back and proceed safely. I am grateful that I was able to be reminded of the danger of distractions during driving without having to pay the consequence thereof. A lot can happen in a couple of seconds of looking away! The 16 would have screamed, and perhaps I would have hit the brakes in time, but this gives me confidence that if something terrible happened one day and I became incapacitated behind the wheel, I might have a chance of the car minimising the catastrophe that could occur.
Lane Assist SEL specific
From the factory, lane assist is ok. If you drift out of the lane it will 'bumper car' you back into the lane. It works well, detects road markings without too much trouble and is pretty unobtrusive. But as it turns out, in various markets there are other things it can do. There's a setting that can be unlocked with an OBD tool that lets you choose "early' or "late" intervention, which lets you use the infotainment to toggle between "bumper car" mode and "lane centering" mode. Lane centering is really really nice for reducing exhaustion on long freeway drives, but in all honesty that's not reeeeaaaally the domain of the e-Golf. There's a slightly more involved process to activate a function called Traffic Jam Assist that allows the lane centering to continue all the way to 0mph when ACC is active. I have it activated and its really nice crawling on the freeway but I really don't use the functions all that often. I enjoy driving the car, and the lane centering feels strange when the steering wheel is sometimes working "against" you, if you have a slightly different track you want to take in the lane. I set it to minimal intervention force, so while I can tell if it's trying to steer against where I'm wanting to steer it doesn't feel like its trying to override me. If I'm tired after a long day I'll absolutely turn it on as a second set of eyes, but I wouldn't really consider it as a self-driving car or anything beyond a self-steer assist fancy cruise control. Its a driver assistance feature only, especially in stock from factory form. This one alone isn't a good reason to buy the SEL, but as an anxious person, having active safety features that can try to catch me if I screw up is valuable to me. I have a good driving record and I like to think I'm generally an ok driver (doesn't everyone?), but even the best can make a mistake.
The Tale of Two Handsome Boys
Upgrade experience from ~24kWh e-Golf to ~36kWh e-Golf
Range
The obvious point of difference is the range to a full charge. For me this has been incredibly impactful, as on the 24kW battery I could not get to San Francisco and back without having to stop and charge. I couldn't drive to the beach without having to drive very conservatively up the mountains to make sure I wouldn't be stressed getting home. I CERTAINLY couldn't decide at the beach that I'd like to drive to a different beach and see if I can find one with better conditions, unless I also planned to make sure I could get to Half Moon Bay or Santa Cruz to charge to get home. Getting to Sacramento was scary, though I did it. Driving to Los Angeles was just not feasible in any world. Most weekends if I was going to go out and explore a bit (still somewhat new to living in the Bay Area and there's so many beautiful places to go!) I would stop to DCFC during the day. I didn't mind doing it, and stopping to charge has never been a GIANT pain point for me, rather I'm just concerned about frequent rapid charging the battery, and the longevity issues that could arise.
With the 19, I think I have DCFCd maybe twice since I've had it without changing my driving style. One of which was when I had spend a day driving around doing errands, then in the evening, spur of the moment drove up the peninsula to compare shiny new e-Golves with 2016golfse. The second time was when my husband and I fanged it over the mountains and went to the beach, then decided to cruise down to Santa Cruz at California speeds, and we stopped at the Whole Foods to pick up some ingredients to bring home for dinner. I probably could have made it back to San Jose without charging at that point (GOM said 55mi) but I did not want to strain the battery going up 17 as the SOC dropped lower and lower, so I plugged in for 10 mins just to bump up enough to ensure the battery would be happy.
I am planning to drive to Bakersfield to visit a friend, some time in the fall. That would not be possible in the 16 but I believe I can make it work with some efficient driving and with new electrify America charge stations. Bakersfield to Los Angeles is then a feasible next day hop. Additionally, since I so rarely DCFC for driving in the Bay Area now, I feel more confident that If I really REALLY needed to, I could chain DCFC to Los Angeles to get there in a hurry and the battery would overall not get too sad at me since it was such a rare occurrence. Would prefer not to test that out, though I believe European e-Golf drivers seem to consider back to back DCFC somewhat normal. Maybe their cars have different BMS. (as an aside, is the consensus still that 99 is the route to take in the e-Golf to get through the Central Valley?)
Performance and Efficiency
The 19 is actually a hair quicker. 16 is lighter and you can feel it, but the extra 15kW in the motor are impactful because you don't run out of steam until maybe 10mph faster than the 16, and it seems to handle freeways speeds more efficiently too. Where the 16 would give me about 3mi/kWh on I-280, the 19 gets me 4mi/kWh with the same driving style. Driving on local streets is a little less efficient than the 16; where I would average 5.4mi/kWh on my stop start local street commute in the 16, I see 5.0 in the 19. I have been able to achieve 6+mi/kWh in both by driving with a hypermile style but in most situations I just can't be bothered because its fun to drive, and the Bay Area has a LOT of expensive cars that are slower off the line than my car, and contain men with fragile egos that I can bruise by dragging them at stoplights in my soyboi EV. But I digress. In reality, the times when the efficiency matters most (cruising at 50+ to cover large distances quickly), the 19 is an improvement, and the regressions in efficiency happen when you're most likely to be parking at a charger anyway (local errands around home)
Regen Braking
The regen on the 16 is stronger and I would consider this one of the EXTREMELY limited number of regressions in the 2019. It still works, but the 16 very nearly felt like one-pedal driving. I have to use the brake pedal more in the 19 than the 16, though it's still ok enough.
Headlights SEL specific
This is a significant area of improvement. The 2016 LED reflectors are some of the best reflector headlights I've used, but I had no idea what I was missing with projectors. I have a particular eye condition that makes night driving a bit more challenging than average and these headlights have given me so much more peace of mind back because I can actually SEE. I also had no idea how nice curve-assistant dynamic lighting was. When I drove the 16 at night recently it felt like the headlights were almost being swiveled AWAY from the direction of the curve even though they were really just pointing forwards. I've just got used to the lights always lighting my path, not just directly in front of me. I like the auto high beam feature as I've never had one that works so reliably before. I don't often drive where I need to use it, though. I do wish we could have the European version with the dynamic shutter.
Digital Dash SEL specific
This is a nice to have, but would never be able to justify the SEL upgrade for this feature alone! I REALLY like the digital dash as it makes my car feel modern, sleek, and cool. I like the way the information is presented and the ability to have maps in the cluster if I so choose. But its not a game changer. The analogue dials in the regular dash are very good, and the small display in the standard dash still carries almost all the same information as you can get in the center section of the digital dash. I'm glad I have the feature, but it's not one of the factors that I considered when I was evaluating the upgrade.
9.2" Discover Pro infotainment SEL specific
Bizarrely, the e-Golf SEL is the only Golf in North America to get the 9.2" unit. Even the R gets the 8". Its high resolution so you get a different UI in CarPlay that shows more information than the 8" screen in the SE or in the 16 SEL. Its a hard-cover touch screen rather than the soft type in the older units, though its an absolute fingerprint magnet. I got a tempered glass screen protector with oleophobic coating and its helped a lot. Was $12 and you can't see that there's anything installed on the screen unless you're looking for it. I miss the physical buttons from the 16, though the 19 isn't too bad. I have to press HOME, then press the equivalent soft-button to the old hard side buttons. I rarely fiddle with it while driving though so it's not a major problem overall. The colour screen is much nicer so it makes up for it.
Seats
The seat cushions seem better padded. I at first thought this was just because my 16 was preowned so I never knew what it was like new and not sat on, but I've read a few people mention that 15 and 16 mark 7s have a less dense foam core than the newer ones, so perhaps its true?
Driver Assist
ACC is a big improvement over regular cruise control, and the e-Golf gets stop-start ACC which feels pretty magical. It's terrifying at first because its nearly impossible to trust a computer to stop the car in time, especially when it feels like its coming in hot. Eventually I started trusting it once I realized that not once had it even had a near miss. Its amazing for the commute when the traffic is just crawling along and I'm tired and don't want to pay attention to micro adjustments of the vehicles speed. Absolutely still requires awareness of the situation but it makes stop start traffic far less annoying. The blind spot monitors have been useful, particularly at night when its a bit trickier to resolve distance in the reflections. It would be nice if it had the option of a sound when a car entered the blind spot, but it doesn't. I ended up changing the wing mirror blinker LED part to a smoked part so block out the little turn signal square light because it was a little confusing having two lights of the same color in my peripheral vision mean different things.
Automatic Emergency Braking may actually have already saved me from a collision. There's a freeway ramp, Stevens Creek Boulevard onto 85N in Cupertino, which takes you to a ramp to I-280E, with a bit of spaghetti merging that has to happen because California. I was making the maneuver from SCB to I-280N, and saw a nasty collision occur on the main carriageway of 85N, over to my left. It distracted me and I did not see that the traffic heading to the 280 ramp that I was following had slowed to a crawl. I was alerted to it by the car slamming on the brakes and screaming at me. I was able to gain control back and proceed safely. I am grateful that I was able to be reminded of the danger of distractions during driving without having to pay the consequence thereof. A lot can happen in a couple of seconds of looking away! The 16 would have screamed, and perhaps I would have hit the brakes in time, but this gives me confidence that if something terrible happened one day and I became incapacitated behind the wheel, I might have a chance of the car minimising the catastrophe that could occur.
Lane Assist SEL specific
From the factory, lane assist is ok. If you drift out of the lane it will 'bumper car' you back into the lane. It works well, detects road markings without too much trouble and is pretty unobtrusive. But as it turns out, in various markets there are other things it can do. There's a setting that can be unlocked with an OBD tool that lets you choose "early' or "late" intervention, which lets you use the infotainment to toggle between "bumper car" mode and "lane centering" mode. Lane centering is really really nice for reducing exhaustion on long freeway drives, but in all honesty that's not reeeeaaaally the domain of the e-Golf. There's a slightly more involved process to activate a function called Traffic Jam Assist that allows the lane centering to continue all the way to 0mph when ACC is active. I have it activated and its really nice crawling on the freeway but I really don't use the functions all that often. I enjoy driving the car, and the lane centering feels strange when the steering wheel is sometimes working "against" you, if you have a slightly different track you want to take in the lane. I set it to minimal intervention force, so while I can tell if it's trying to steer against where I'm wanting to steer it doesn't feel like its trying to override me. If I'm tired after a long day I'll absolutely turn it on as a second set of eyes, but I wouldn't really consider it as a self-driving car or anything beyond a self-steer assist fancy cruise control. Its a driver assistance feature only, especially in stock from factory form. This one alone isn't a good reason to buy the SEL, but as an anxious person, having active safety features that can try to catch me if I screw up is valuable to me. I have a good driving record and I like to think I'm generally an ok driver (doesn't everyone?), but even the best can make a mistake.