MDI connection not working with Iphone???

[ofcounsel]

My local dealer has had the car since Thursday and they don't have it fixed yet. I'm driving one of their loaner Passats. I miss my e-golf.

 

[Hetz8500]

My local dealer has had the car since Thursday and they don't have it fixed yet. I'm driving one of their loaner Passats. I miss my e-golf.

That's crazy. You should have them call my dealership and speak to Mat Lucia in the service dept. It was an easy enough fix for my car. They didn't even pull it into a service bay. A tech brought a laptop over and enabled it in just a few minutes.

 

[ofcounsel]

My local dealer has had the car since Thursday and they don't have it fixed yet. I'm driving one of their loaner Passats. I miss my e-golf.

That's crazy. You should have them call my dealership and speak to Mat Lucia in the service dept. It was an easy enough fix for my car. They didn't even pull it into a service bay. A tech brought a laptop over and enabled it in just a few minutes.

Well, I finally gave up. I just went back and picked up the car. Still not fixed. I asked them to call Mat, and when they hear back about how to fix the problem, to call me back and I'll come in.

 

[miimura]

My car had this issue. 30pin MDI cable would charge iPhone 4, but would not pass audio and would not show up as an iPod Media Device.
I took the car in and this is what the work order says:

CUSTOMER STATES IPOD ADAPTOR CORD DOES NOT OPERATE.
TECH VERIFIED MDI BOX FAULTY. REMOVED AND REPLACED MEDIA BOX TO CORRECT. RECHECKED AND RETESTED. VERIFIED OPERATING AS DESIGNED PER VW.
PARTS: QTY: 1 FP NUMBER: 5G0-035-222-A DESCRIPTION: INTERFACE WARRANTY: $0.00

iPhone 4 now shows up and works properly as a iPod Media device. Artist/Album/Song info is on the screen and the progress bar is shown correctly. Album artwork is not shown.

Obviously it would be better if these cases could be resolved by changing settings from a connected laptop as described previously, but if this is how VW wants to fix it, who am I to complain? It's warranty work with no money out of my pocket.

My VW Customer Service case manager said that a Lightning cable would be provided, but it was not provided by the dealer. She is supposed to call me back tomorrow, so I will ask if VW can send me one.

 

[Hetz8500]

My car had this issue. 30pin MDI cable would charge iPhone 4, but would not pass audio and would not show up as an iPod Media Device.
I took the car in and this is what the work order says:

CUSTOMER STATES IPOD ADAPTOR CORD DOES NOT OPERATE.
TECH VERIFIED MDI BOX FAULTY. REMOVED AND REPLACED MEDIA BOX TO CORRECT. RECHECKED AND RETESTED. VERIFIED OPERATING AS DESIGNED PER VW.
PARTS: QTY: 1 FP NUMBER: 5G0-035-222-A DESCRIPTION: INTERFACE WARRANTY: $0.00

iPhone 4 now shows up and works properly as a iPod Media device. Artist/Album/Song info is on the screen and the progress bar is shown correctly. Album artwork is not shown.

Obviously it would be better if these cases could be resolved by changing settings from a connected laptop as described previously, but if this is how VW wants to fix it, who am I to complain? It's warranty work with no money out of my pocket.

My VW Customer Service case manager said that a Lightning cable would be provided, but it was not provided by the dealer. She is supposed to call me back tomorrow, so I will ask if VW can send me one.

Interesting. Mine's been working fine since they enabled it. The album artwork shows up, too. The only quirk is if I connect with the MDI and use music streaming apps. All info shows up correctly on the car's display, but using the arrow buttons on the touchscreen or the steering wheel to advance tracks switches to the iPod app and plays the first track alphabetically in my library. I think this is an iOS issue rather than an issue with the car, as this happened with previous phone in my old car and it was resolved with an iOS update on the phone.

 

[miimura]

My car had this issue. 30pin MDI cable would charge iPhone 4, but would not pass audio and would not show up as an iPod Media Device.
I took the car in and this is what the work order says:

CUSTOMER STATES IPOD ADAPTOR CORD DOES NOT OPERATE.
TECH VERIFIED MDI BOX FAULTY. REMOVED AND REPLACED MEDIA BOX TO CORRECT. RECHECKED AND RETESTED. VERIFIED OPERATING AS DESIGNED PER VW.
PARTS: QTY: 1 FP NUMBER: 5G0-035-222-A DESCRIPTION: INTERFACE WARRANTY: $0.00

iPhone 4 now shows up and works properly as a iPod Media device. Artist/Album/Song info is on the screen and the progress bar is shown correctly. Album artwork is not shown.

Obviously it would be better if these cases could be resolved by changing settings from a connected laptop as described previously, but if this is how VW wants to fix it, who am I to complain? It's warranty work with no money out of my pocket.

My VW Customer Service case manager said that a Lightning cable would be provided, but it was not provided by the dealer. She is supposed to call me back tomorrow, so I will ask if VW can send me one.

Interesting. Mine's been working fine since they enabled it. The album artwork shows up, too. The only quirk is if I connect with the MDI and use music streaming apps. All info shows up correctly on the car's display, but using the arrow buttons on the touchscreen or the steering wheel to advance tracks switches to the iPod app and plays the first track alphabetically in my library. I think this is an iOS issue rather than an issue with the car, as this happened with previous phone in my old car and it was resolved with an iOS update on the phone.

It doesn't really surprise me that the iPod control function doesn't work with other music streaming apps. Remember back in the day when the iPhone Music App that played stored content had to be loaded from iTunes on a PC via USB and the app was call "iPod"? You can still use the MDI to charge the phone and stream over Bluetooth. That will probably work better with something like Pandora or Spotify.

 

[Moor]

I had the same problem, I plugged in my iPod as well as iPhone 4s and neither worked. After seeing this thread, I asked the dealer to check the MDI setting when I took the car in today for the Battery Management System safety recall. They enabled the MDI in the software setting and it works great now. My car is a 15 e-golf limited edition (wheel covers and cloth seats) Limestone grey, in Oregon

 

[inyearstocome]

All experiencing this issue, I was able to solve a similar one, albeit for my Fiat 500e, not an e-Golf.

Around the same time I updated to iOS 9.3 (version didn't matter in my case) i had to make room, so I deleted the pesky U2 Album that comes preloaded. Starting to get a hint?

Check your iPhone and make sure you have at least one song from iTunes in the official Apple Music app. If you have an empty library, you get issue where the vehicle doesn't recognizeb the phone attached via USB since it doesn't have any music to index.

What a silly, silly error.

Adding a single song from the free section in iTunes solved everything. Now I can connect and play Spotify/podcasts/pandora/gps and everything else.

Good luck for those who might have the same issue!