Minor issues/complaints

Since buying my eGolf in November, I have found a few small, but not insignificant problems with my car.

Alas my pre-owned car didn't come with a paper manual and VW's online "Know your VW" manual is sketchy at best.

-When reversing, the black Parking Assist window obscures the left half of my view of the rear camera for a good 7 seconds. Really annoying to have to wait for it to clear or tap the <| button before I can back up.

-Occasionally, I'll find that the car hasn't charged overnight, even when I'm careful to check that charging has started. I don't have CarNet. It may occur when I unlock the car to retrieve something, and when I look at the charge port it has no indicator light. Charging resumes if I unplug the port and reinsert.

-Sometimes, when I turn the car on, the radio will have forgotten which station it was on, and default to 87.7.

I'm hoping these items have some quick fixes, anybody have any ideas?

Except for the charging unexpectedly stopping, the others are all known "features" of the US e-Golf. The other one is the way the HVAC always resets to 72F after being parked for a certain amount of time. That one can be changed so that it remembers your HVAC settings. It requires a dealer visit or VCDS to implement the "adaptation".

Sounds like we both got into these cars with 3 year/~30k mile old 2015 SELs at around the same time dustboy. We're the beginning of the secondary used marketgeneration and should compare notes along the way.

On the charging, get CarNet going (should be able to get a 90 day free trial for everything). You might have some charge settings stored from the previous owner. If/when you ever want to set delayed charging it is the only user interface to do so with on our 2015 cars.

Our car had some whacky charging issues, one of which was the (fairly well known) inability to timer charge with a Clipper Creek HCS40 (which according to Clipper Creek uses the same control circuit board as the Delphi 110V EVSE unit provided with the car). After reading a number of old threads in this forum we scheduled a service appointment with the VW dealership (in San Jose) where we bought the car. They needed to keep the car a few days to fix, but the tech indicated there were "multiple fault codes" and the replaced a charging module and updated some firmware. We were less than impressed with the 2017 Golf Sportwagon loaner but it was nice to have for my wife to drive while her new baby was getting fixed. Charging has been flawless ever since.

Are you charging overnight with Level 1 or Level 2?

The paper manual is no great shakes either, maybe I am spoiled by 3 decades of mostly Audis (and a rogue BMW 540i Touring).

There is a wealth of information in the archives of this forum to help us newcomers out.

So far we haven't experienced radio amnesia or backup camera issues. I wonder if a weak 12v battery may be cropping up?

mvsphoto, my first thought was a weak 12v battery, but miimura's comment above might indicate a software bug. What didn't you like about the Golf Alltrack? My wife likes the look of it, and if it drives anything like a Golf I am sold.

I just had the car into the dealer to have a new key programmed ($290 BTW ) and I assume they would have scanned it for any codes. But, I guess you should never assume anything with a dealer.

I'm charging with the 110V EVSE that was included. My hunch is that the 110V EVSE is nothing but a simple microprocessor and some relays, since the actual charger is onboard. If it is true that the Delphi and Clipper Creek EVSE use the same control, then theoretically I could upgrade the wiring and relays to get a 220v EVSE (cue the peanut gallery to tell me this is a terrible idea).

EEEnnnyhoo, the charging problem has only occurred a couple of times in the last 2 months, and there's every chance it's something I did wrong. The charging process is less than intuitive with the locking and unlocking and the charge button that seems to serve no purpose.

My biggest gripe is the Park Assist screen that insists on covering the left half of my backup camera. What's the point of having a backup camera if you can't see half of what you might be about to hit?

If you don't engage the parking sensors on the front when you complete parking, ie , dont get too close to anything an no audible cues go off when you have completed your parking, you should get the full view in your rear view camera. At least I do, in my 2015 SEL.

miimura said:

Except for the charging unexpectedly stopping, the others are all known "features" of the US e-Golf. The other one is the way the HVAC always resets to 72F after being parked for a certain amount of time. That one can be changed so that it remembers your HVAC settings. It requires a dealer visit or VCDS to implement the "adaptation".

Click to expand...

I believe these "features" are limited to the 2015 model years and were addressed for 2016+.