Multiple system failures within 24 hours of delivery

Onto vehicles
#1

Took delivery of an ID.3 on Friday. Within 24 hours it was displaying error messages saying that the following weren’t working:

  • front assist
  • adaptive cruise
  • tyre pressure monitoring
  • parking distance sensors
  • occupant protection system

I logged all these things on the app and rather thought someone might have contacted me from Onto today.

They didn’t, so I’ve just phoned Onto and been told they won’t just swap the car out as a dead-on-arrival as I’d have expected. Instead they want me to go to a dealer but the earliest appointment will be late December or early Jan.

I said I didn’t think that was acceptable given that at least one of the errors concerned a vehicle safety system.

So then they decided to book a breakdown callout, even though the car isn’t broken down. They didn’t check first to see if I was going to be at home to meet the breakdown person. So now they’ve changed the booking so that, in theory, the breakdown service will come to the local BP garage during the hour this evening when I’m due to be sat there charging the car.

Am I being pessimistic by thinking it’s unlikely someone from the AA is going to be able to fix all the above at the roadside?

#2

Probably the 12v battery is the real issue as all sorts of crazy errors get thrown up when it’s low volts.

Real pain you have this as an issue and it’s not 100%.

12v batteries are a weak point in quite a lot of EV’s as it needs charging correctly and some cars have been known to have faulty 12v batteries too. For a legacy technology lead-acid batteries are not that good/reliable.

Get the AA to check the 12v battery and if it’s low volts or needs charging try and get him to replace it if possible.
If it just gets charged the issues will likely stop for a while, but often return soon after.

Getting the car updated software and battery update is the real solution.

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#3

Have you tried doing a hard reboot of the infotainment system it could just be a bug

#4

Yes, tried the hard reset on Saturday but it didn’t do anything.

On one drive that I did yesterday the faults disappeared but they were back again today.

#5

Thanks. That’s useful to know.

#6

The ID.3 is one of the buggiest cars software wise , I have seen in a long time…

MIne does the Front Occupant Protection system a lot,

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#7

It’s interesting to see VW group decided to go down the whole gamut from scratch with a huge software side of the business (investing billions, 10,000 software engineers - if I remember it’s 2nd biggest to SAP) rather than use Apple or Google etc.
The new VW boss Thomas Schafer, is still committed to it although he realises ID3 and ID4 need a complete overhaul. (hardware and software)

Article in the Sunday Times yesterday.

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#8

AA chap agreed it could be a battery problem (although the didn’t check the voltage) but said he’s not allowed to fit new batteries. Only VW Assist can do that.

I’ll get a multimeter, and possibly a charger, on it myself later today.

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#9

That’s a huge failure. That’s the simplest task for AA, RAC, etc.
That’s the first thing to check and what I do for any car.
Getting it fully charged is a good start for sure.

Trust you can live with it till you get the full software/battery upgrade done.

Edit. For anyone interested too.
12v battery soc info

Testing of a conventional wet cell battery:

A measuring device which can only measure the state of charge of the battery is suitable to test a conventional car battery. In an ideal case, an open circuit voltage of about 12.8 V is measured with a Multimeter. If the voltage falls below 12.4 V, the battery should be recharged as soon as possible. A continuous low charge damages the battery due to sulfation.

As the main load on a conventional starter battery is due to the starting process and after charging by the generator there is no further discharge, the cold start current is decisive in this case. Due to aging and wear the capacity of the battery to deliver high currents gradually decreases. In addition, the lower the charge (determined by measuring the open circuit voltage), the lower the possible current which can be deliverd during the starting process.

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image1920×1440 333 KB

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#10

Interesting. Thank you.

I checked the voltage a couple of hours ago and it was 12.14V so I’ve stuck it on charge and will see how it’s looking later.

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#11

Oh that’s pretty low, but at least it’s the right side of 12
I have measured batteries that are only reading 10 or 11v so very flat, but they have recovered with a suitable maintenance/recovery charge.

You may find you need to manually charge the 12v battery once a week, possibly more to ensure it behaves till you get the upgrades done. Sounds like you have the parking/ability to do that.

#12

Yeah, my “real” car is coming up to 30 years old, only gets driven occasionally, and has Italian electrics, so I use a decent CTEK charger on that which I’ve now temporarily repurposed for the VW. :grinning:

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#13

Magic CTEK is the gold standard :+1:
Aldi and Lidl have both sold some surprisingly good similar products too.

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#14

Battery was up to 13.17V by this morning but that didn’t get rid of the errors.

Meanwhile, my very helpful contact at Onto (David in the business team) got on the case yesterday and did what the call centre had been unable/unwilling to do by arranging for me to get a replacement car next week.

I did also suggest we try getting the battery swapped in the meantime in case that sorted things. So yesterday Onto arranged for VW Assist to come out this morning. Instead of that, though, an AA man turned up. This one said he was allowed to fit a new battery but he didn’t have one. He went off to the supplier to get one but they were out of stock. So at that point all he could suggest I do was drive to the nearest VW dealer and make a fuss at the front counter until they sorted it.

So I’m going to admit defeat now and await the replacement car next week. The only downside is it’ll be grey not turquoise.

Don’t know if anyone important at Onto reads this forum but, in case they do, this is another example of David and Andy in the business team being brilliant and giving great customer service (unlike most of the people I’ve dealt with when I’ve had to ring the Driverline call centre).

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#15

Parts supply shortages are still troubling and even a common 12v battery (although it’s probably in high EV fitment demand) is not what you expect.

Good to hear a swap has been arranged. Trust that one comes with all the latest hardware/software in place so you don’t have to get that all done, but I suspect very few cars have had this upgrade, whether that’s Onto fleet or other consumer/lease/hire etc.

I’ll flag @Adam_at_Onto so he is aware of the good support from David and Andy and your driverline comments.

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#16

Meant to say, sometimes fixing the real fault, getting a good 12v, isn’t actually enough to clear system error mesgs./faults. Sometimes they clear themselves after driving for a while, other times they need clearing by some sort of reset or hooking up diagnostics kit and manually clearing.

Even a straight forward battery swap can throw up errors that didn’t exist before the battery swap. This applies to ICE cars as well as EV’s. This is because various software defaults get lost due to the disconnect and have to be re-learnt.
I had this many years ago and couldn’t believe all the errors, thinking I had broken something.
Googling soon found you had to drive up the road for the sensors to learn some data and then the errors all disappear. :man_facepalming:

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#17

Sadly the new one doesn’t have the updated software - that was one of the first questions I asked about it. :slight_smile:

I did drive the car down the road a bit this morning after checking the voltage but I’m going out later so, who knows, maybe a longer drive will reset something.

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#18

From what I’ve read on other forums, the VW dealers are swamped with upgrade work, hence worth ringing round dealers to find any with shorter queues. Suspect it’s going to be a long time before they get all the cars in the U.K. upgraded.

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#19

@Autolycus1 sorry to hear that you have been having some issues with your ID3. I’ll take a look at what we could have done better to find a resolution without having to contact David/Andy (but I will pass your positive feedback onto them for resolving the issue by replacing the car). CS should be able to triage and resolve issues like this in conjunction with our maintenance team.

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#20

Thanks, @Adam_at_Onto. I would be very happy to have a (constructive, I promise!) chat with you on the phone about the issues I’ve had with CS - both with this car and also with my previous one.

I really like the Onto concept. So if giving you some honest feedback helps you guys to implement that concept in a better way - so as you get more people driving EVs and so as Onto continues to be around for the long term to keep me supplied with cars - then I’d be glad to help. :grinning:

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