I wanted to buy a Porsche Taycan, but they treated me like fluff. I bought a VW ID.3. Weak [Reader]

We were written by a reader who bought a Volkswagen ID.3 1st. He “bought”, that is, he did not “get it out of the press park,” like we and other editions, but spent his hard-earned money, which he will also remember a little later. He decided to share with us his observations, experiences and thoughts. They are here.

The following text has been compiled and revised based on the submissions and reports sent by e-mail. The headings and subheadings are ours. For ease of reading, we do not use italics. Our position is presented at the very bottom of the text.

Update 2020/11/14, hours. 8.30: Below we have added the author's explanation of why he switched from the Taycan to the Volkswagen ID.3, while ignoring other seemingly more obvious models. There are many months of hiatus between these purchases, the first approach to the Taycan happened at the turn of 2019/2020.

VW ID.3 1st - Buyer Experience

I, among other things, a BMW i3, wanted to buy Taikan

It started with the fact that I wanted to buy a Porsche Taikan. First visit to a certain large showroom:

• no one was interested in my visit, no one came, I was waiting
• After about 10 minutes, I asked the reception to call the seller. Nobody came because everyone was busy. This is how they work with a queue of customers.

A second visit about two months later to the same salon. Here the administration immediately noticed me and my wife. They called the seller. The man, a little annoyed at being distracted from other activities, an impeccably dressed man in a suit, probably from the next year's collection, straightened his pocket square on his jacket, looked at me and asked if I knew how much the Taycan was worth.

Without waiting for my answer, he pointed to the Porsche Cayenne at the showroom and said: – Because, for example, this car starts from PLN 370. Keep talking? - I could only have one reaction: Oh, mom, then I'm sorry, the audience messed up!

I still haven't bought the Taycan and don't even want it anymore for free.

Over time, I decided to get a Volkswagen ID.

I am the owner of Volkswagen ID.3 and would like to share with you my opinion about this car. I emphasize: the owner. There is a huge difference between an owner and someone who has driven the car and happily expresses their opinion.

White Volkswagen ID.3 1st. Illustrative photo

VW ID.3 - advantages

The car drives, does not require refueling (only charging, four side doors, a lot of space for second-row passengers. In terms of the quality of plastic, seats, etc. We can say that this is such a simple Volkswagen, Skoda, Kia or Hyundai at a price of 60-80 thousand PLN This is not a premium league.

All of this has its advantages.

VW ID.3 - disadvantages

There is nothing electronic about the car, nothing as interesting as Tesla, or as innovative as the environmental materials in the BMW i3. ID.3 is very endless and nobody catches any bugs noticed and is not interested in solving them as soon as possible. I tried to get my Volkswagen dealer interested in this item, but to no avail.

I've charged the car to 100 percent many times, not 80 percent. I've never seen 420 kilometers range on a watch declared by the manufacturer even in Eco mode [manufacturer claims 420 WLTP units - approx. editor www.elektrowoz.pl]. This value is a myth. I understand that it all depends on how you drive, but since 420 km is stated, I should see this on the clock on a new car, not 368 km:

Maximum power reserve VW ID.3, promised by the car. In our case, it was 364 kilometers, but the day was cooler.

Many months of waiting for the car were offset by a small gift sent to the buyer's address. Nice gesture. It's a pity that the delivery included a card for free charging, but inside ... there was no card. She came in the following correspondence. With apologies.

Since the selection of the machine, not a single defect has been eliminated by remote reprogramming. For example the interior lighting button seems to be somehow related to the airbags... Do not press it, because the next time you start the car, you will not have the driver's airbag.

Airbag error (yellow / orange light) and simple graphics on the car screen

Cruise control? The car decelerates and accelerates on its own after registering a new road sign. In practice, you set the cruise control to 90 km / h, drive onto the highway, and the car accelerates to 140 km / h. If the 50 km / h mark appears two lanes apart, you have unnecessary hard braking.

Every now and then appears when driving on cruise control. the message “Move in the middle of the lane”... I'm doing it!

Each entry into the car or even lifting the buttocks from the driver's seat causes ask if you want to be online or offline... How many times a day, according to the manufacturer's statement, should I make a decision about this? Once a day or once and for all is not enough?

The radio does not have an automatic station volume control function. When we switch between broadcasters, the volume is random: one time the station is barely audible, another time it roars. Navigation can turn off the radio (this is an advantage), but sometimes the radio becomes quieter and there are no messages. Oh, the default keyboard is QWERTZ, not QWERTY.

Voice commands they work slowly, they ask for the same thing twice (for example, "Connect with Marek" - he searches, he searches - "Do you want to connect with Marek?" - no, hell, with Piotrek!), setting navigation with them - comedy of errors. The very launch of the voice assistant after the command "Hello ID!" takes a few seconds. Waste of time.

Since we're talking about EV route planning, the most important element is a reminder to refuel and drive to the nearest charger. This feature does not work because the navigation was probably written for the Ionity chargers network, which are not available in Poland. So, with a range of about 30-40 km, the system tells you to recharge, but doesn't know where to recharge.

[One of the lists was not ready yet, but there were a limited number of charging points in the navigation system - approx. editor www.elektrowoz.pl]

Summation

To summarize: here I have to write that "the machine is good, but requires a software fix" or "I do not recommend it because it is too expensive and has many disadvantages." And I - I don't know what to say. It amazes me that after so many months of delay, these cars are being handed over to customers. It's not even beta.

I'm coming to the conclusion that it's not hard to make an [electric] car right now - as seen in many Chinese companies like BYD - but it's hard to make a car that can compete with an eight-year-old BMW i3 or BMW iXNUMX. eight year old Tesla. Sadly, no one is interested in the comments of the buyer after the sale of the car.

After analyzing what I have read, seen and experienced, I conclude that the big car companies are now demonstrating that they can also produce electrical equipment.. But they deliberately do not make them attractive so as not to jeopardize the sale of their internal combustion vehicles..

Appendix: why did I choose ID.3 and not, for example, Tesla Model 3?

To understand your choice, it is enough to forget about car prices for a moment. As I said earlier [this part of the email is not included in the above content - approx. ed. www.elektrowoz.pl] for me, an electric car is a city car, not a long-distance car. Urban, that is, sports or small, convenient, for parking in the city without printing parking tickets and for bus lanes.

I chose the Taycan because the Porsche brand was well established and the lack of exhaust noise ensured that my neighbors wouldn't hate me.

Since I am offended by this model, what is left for me? Do you know any other electric sports car? I do not. We're not talking about the Tesla S because it looks like a Ford Mondeo. Not about the Tesla Model 3, because it's a car without a cab. Instead, it features a computer game stand for a teenager with a supermarket wheel and a 15-inch monitor.

So, since I don't see another sports electrician, I had to choose something from small city cars. After abandoning electric models similar to their combustion engine twins, there are only two cars left: the BMW i3 and VW ID.3. I had a BMW i3 120 Ah for a year (100 percent recommend), I bought a VW ID.

It seems to me that my choice was absolutely rational, not to mention how many times the cheaper car I bought.

For a commenter saying I put pus on the Taycan because they didn't sell me. Rembrandt: I would get a Rembrandt by buying a Tesla and taking it to a service station in Berlin for inspection. By the way, I apologize to all offended Tesla owners. For me, this is the fastest and ugliest car in one bottle. Therefore, I understand that you can fall in love with him too.

You take my ID.3 information as a criticism of a disappointed customer. I just wanted to share my comments. The ID.3 will be a good car in a year or two. I still drive it because I need to somehow make it to the BMW i4.

Editorial help www.elektrowoz.pl

In recent weeks, the editors have received more letters of this tone. To an extent we take this as a good sign. Why? About 20-25 years ago, there was no Internet provider in Poland that was rated worse than Telekomunikacja Polska with the Neostrada TP service. For many, Neostrada was the only way to get [back then] broadband Internet access, millions of Poles used the service (the rest dreamed of), and Pure laws of statistics say that for every 1 client, at least 000-2 something will not work properly or they will not be able to customize something.... Disgruntled people will try to complain (that's right!), And behind each such disgruntled customer there are thirty, three hundred or thirty thousand satisfied people who won't answer because they don't even know about the problem.

This number of complaints indicates that the VW ID.3 has sold quite a few copies, but also that the price / quality ratio at this stage is so-so... As if buyers weren't aware that there would initially be software flaws that Volkswagen has been talking about for a long time:

> Volkswagen ID.3 initially with limited functionality. Additional opportunities thanks to online updates

However, our biggest concern is that the website www.elektrowoz.pl has failed to popularize knowledge about electricians.... We have to fight for every driver in Poland, for everyone who is interested in electric vehicles, in order to get to him. If we could A VW ID.3 buyer will know that catalog ranges of WLTP are almost impossible to reach. They can be achieved in the city in good weather. Usually you need to divide the manufacturer's value by 1,17 to get what we see on the counters. For VW ID.3: 420 / 1,17 = 359 km, and the counters show our Reader a maximum of 368 km - fits, doesn't it?

Volkswagen ID.3 range cloud after fully charged in Wroclaw

We are concerned that we are beginning to speak in slang that only a select group of experts get. This is only a small part of specialists who understand why we indicate the battery capacity as "58 (62) kWh". And ... we don't know what to do about it. We need to think about this question, because we would like to help you choose cars, describing both their advantages (quiet, fast, convenient, cheap / free) and their disadvantages (more expensive, long charging time, children's problems). We leave this as homework, any suggestions are welcome.

Ps. And we are waiting for your opinion, Mr. Peter, about VW ID.3 1st Max. 🙂

This may interest you: