parking brake auto engages when driver door is opened

[user 703]

Anyone has experienced this issue? Experienced this a few times under the following condition. Slow speed parking maneuver. Open the driver door to check how close I am to the curb. Transmission is in drive mode. brake pedal is engaged (obviously). Incidentally loud warning sound comes on. When I close the door again the parking brake has auto engaged. Not sure if this is intended as a "safety feature", but I have not experienced this in any other car.

 

[JoulesThief]

Since you back into a parallel parking space, use the parking sensors and the lines in your rear view camera in the dash, to measure how close you are to the curb. No need to open up the door, the camera shows all in reverse, you should be very closely aligned to the guides shown in the camera, parallel, to the line shown of the picture of the curb.

 

[user 703]

If it would be this easy I would not have posted. In this case it is a dark, unevenly sloped corner and no-one in the neighborhood manages to park in one go. And this does not address the auto-engaging of the parking brake.

 

[JoulesThief]

double post

 

[JoulesThief]

Not many of us live and park on corners, with uneven curbs, so the probability of others experiencing exactly what you do are slim. Buy the 2016 model with the self parking feature option, if it comes out, or wait for a year model of e-Golf or other car that does have the self parking feature.

The e-brake turning on is a built in safety feature.

 

[eeedub]

Even with a regular straight curb the backup camera is not all that helpful, hard to gauge parallelism with through a fisheye lens... I would like to see the auto park handle a curb like the one described.

I have run into a few similar weird/ annoying quirks with the e-golf. I live on a one way street in Boston, I often stop in front of my house to unload stuff from the car. In park and the car on the E-golf will turn on the parking brake when you open the door. If you leave the car for more than a few seconds it will turn the car to standby mode and kill the lights if they are on. This becomes pretty annoying when I am rushing to drop things at my door and get out of the way of traffic coming down the hill.

 

[forbin404]

Even with a regular straight curb the backup camera is not all that helpful, hard to gauge parallelism with through a fisheye lens... I would like to see the auto park handle a curb like the one described.

I have run into a few similar weird/ annoying quirks with the e-golf. I live on a one way street in Boston, I often stop in front of my house to unload stuff from the car. In park and the car on the E-golf will turn on the parking brake when you open the door. If you leave the car for more than a few seconds it will turn the car to standby mode and kill the lights if they are on. This becomes pretty annoying when I am rushing to drop things at my door and get out of the way of traffic coming down the hill.

I don't know about the first thing, if that is true, neat. Never forget parking brake.

For #2, that's because your key is outside of the car, it's actually a safety measure and if I remember right, there is a lawsuit for ICE cars left running the garage and I expect ALL keyless start cars to have that feature.

http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/26/autos/keyless-ignition-lawsuit/

 

[RonDawg]

I tried this yesterday afternoon and yes the parking brake does engage. However, I know I've opened the door while backing on a few occasions before and don't recall the parking brake doing this; what would happen is if I opened the door while the car was in Park, the car would go into a standby mode in which the "tachometer" needle would go fully to the left as if the car were turned off.

My guess this feature was added when I had the safety recall update done a couple of weeks ago, and it's likely a safety feature.

 

[JoulesThief]

I tried this yesterday afternoon and yes the parking brake does engage. However, I know I've opened the door while backing on a few occasions before and don't recall the parking brake doing this; what would happen is if I opened the door while the car was in Park, the car would go into a standby mode in which the "tachometer" needle would go fully to the left as if the car were turned off.

My guess this feature was added when I had the safety recall update done a couple of weeks ago, and it's likely a safety feature.

Probably someone tried backing up with the door opened, and jammed the door, ruining it, and tried to go after VW to fix it under warranty, so VW made it a safety feature.

 

[cctop]

Yes, my 2016 SE engages the parking brake if you open the door.

Also the 2016 SE does not have parking sensors, so I have found this behavior annoying on
the two occasions I've wanted to do it.

 

[RonDawg]

I tried it again this afternoon and verified the yellow lamp on the parking brake does come on. However, if you leave the transmission selector in gear, shut the door, and press the accelerator, the parking brake turns off and the car moves.

Probably someone tried backing up with the door opened, and jammed the door, ruining it, and tried to go after VW to fix it under warranty, so VW made it a safety feature.

More likely, someone got hurt and filed a personal injury lawsuit.

 

[BrianZ]

The E-Golf will set the parking brake if you open the door with car is anything but Park. This is a saftey feature due to the car being electric (you cannot hear the car running). While I agree this can be annoying at times, I have seen more than a few people try to hop out of them still in drive and walk away.

 

[JoulesThief]

The E-Golf will set the parking brake if you open the door with car is anything but Park. This is a saftey feature due to the car being electric (you cannot hear the car running). While I agree this can be annoying at times, I have seen more than a few people try to hop out of them still in drive and walk away.

Yep, idiots. Like parents that leave their kids in the car with the motor running and Jr crashes it shortly thereafter. I've seen it happen with both kids, and dogs in the car, shifting the car into gear.

 

[bizzle]

If it's engaging and disengaging automatically without having to fiddle with any settings there doesn't sound to be any downsides.

 

[GadgetGav]

Probably someone tried backing up with the door opened, and jammed the door, ruining it, and tried to go after VW to fix it under warranty, so VW made it a safety feature.

More likely, someone got hurt and filed a personal injury lawsuit.

Even more likely, as BrianZ said, VW foresaw these things happening with a car that's silent when stopped and put the safety feature in to prevent them happening. Maybe they saw them happen with the EV1...?

 

[RonDawg]

Even more likely, as BrianZ said, VW foresaw these things happening with a car that's silent when stopped and put the safety feature in to prevent them happening.

Too bad VW couldn't foresee the crapstorm that's now coming their way when they decided to install cheating devices in their TDI cars.

 

[GadgetGav]

Too bad VW couldn't foresee the crapstorm that's now coming their way when they decided to install cheating devices in their TDI cars.

Somehow they convinced themselves they wouldn't get caught...

 

[eeedub]

Even with a regular straight curb the backup camera is not all that helpful, hard to gauge parallelism with through a fisheye lens... I would like to see the auto park handle a curb like the one described.

I have run into a few similar weird/ annoying quirks with the e-golf. I live on a one way street in Boston, I often stop in front of my house to unload stuff from the car. In park and the car on the E-golf will turn on the parking brake when you open the door. If you leave the car for more than a few seconds it will turn the car to standby mode and kill the lights if they are on. This becomes pretty annoying when I am rushing to drop things at my door and get out of the way of traffic coming down the hill.

I don't know about the first thing, if that is true, neat. Never forget parking brake.

For #2, that's because your key is outside of the car, it's actually a safety measure and if I remember right, there is a lawsuit for ICE cars left running the garage and I expect ALL keyless start cars to have that feature.

http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/26/autos/keyless-ignition-lawsuit/

Yeah, I guess better safe than sorry, but its just a bit annoying while rushing to get out of traffic coming down the street. For me it usually goes like this:

"Oh crap car turned itself to standby, need to restart. Shoot forgot to press brake before start button, car is now off. Ok got car turned back on, throw into D, try to move but parking brake is on. Parking brake wont turn off. Oh yeah, need foot on brake to turn off. Ok, finally moving, 15 seconds (and many angry neighbors) later)"

Especially for someone coming from a manual transmission none of this is muscle memory and pretty annoying. My TDI (we all know how much bad stuff these are putting out the tailpipe) does not turn off when I get out with the key in my pocket, why should my electric? I would guess its a battery saving thing but wouldn't a 1 or 5 minute timer be a lot better? That lets you get in and out, leaving the car ready to go, lights on, climate control going and could turn off after the timer to prevent draining the battery.

Anyway, none of these are a deal-breaker, just annoyances.

 

[bizzle]

I'm confused by all these responses.

I was taught to always have my foot on the brake pedal when I start and stop the car. Seems like it'd be common sense.
With a manual transmission that'd be even more important. Did you really start your manuals without your foot on the brake pedal? How can that not be muscle memory by now?

 

[RonDawg]

I'm confused by all these responses.

I was taught to always have my foot on the brake pedal when I start and stop the car. Seems like it'd be common sense.
With a manual transmission that'd be even more important. Did you really start your manuals without your foot on the brake pedal? How can that not be muscle memory by now?

If my parking brake was on (and I always set the parking brake on manuals), I wouldn't. However, I would always press the clutch pedal in. Besides being surprised by the sudden forward jerk of the car because I "thought" it was in Neutral, some cars (like my 2003 Altima) required you to depress the clutch pedal in order to engage the starter motor. Plus it saves wear and tear on the starter motor since it doesn't have to turn a transmission shaft in addition to the engine.

For automatic/single gear (EVs) cars, pressing on the brake pedal to simply start it didn't become a thing until pushbutton start. Heck, I'm old enough to remember when you didn't have to press on the brake pedal simply to shift out of Park; that didn't become a requirement until a bunch of Fords began slipping into Reverse all by themselves.