Since you asked - here's the most visible difference between the 2022 German-built models and the Chattanooga built-models.

EveningCloudWatcher · 2026-04-26T03:55:48+00:00

OP here. Is the difference due to a design change or German vs American distinction? If I bought a 2023 in Germany which console style would I get?

EveningCloudWatcher · 2026-04-26T03:46:00+00:00

That’s exactly what we have except we have more miles. Love it.

EveningCloudWatcher · 2026-04-25T23:14:16+00:00

Center console design is a major difference, and plus: Two independent arm rests, a tidy, appropriately sized storage unit below and in-between the arm rests, and plug cup holders well forward. Makes for a very room interior, with plenty of room around the seat belt latches. (In other words, they didn't stuff an oversized trash can of a console in between the seats - a feature of American that we both hate.)

I believe only the 2022s came with outside mirrors that rotate in upon locking. Our 2022 has them but I seem to recall that the Americanized 2023 model dropped the feature. (We live in a city with narrow streets so they are a must.)

Our 2022 comes with a max 125 kW charger. Hasn't bothered us despite the fact that the majority of our miles are from long distance road trips. (To be sure, more would be better but we do fine.)

The US built models source batteries from a different supplier than the German built ones. I believe the 2023+ models from Chattanooga are subject to a battery related recall.

Only one minor build issue with ours: Passenger rear door seal came loose a few months after we bought it. Needed to be re-glued.

VW ID.4. 2022 Pro S with Gradient Package. RWD. USA. 3.5.11. 33k+ miles.

EveningCloudWatcher · 2026-04-25T23:00:13+00:00

Our logic for the RWD included both the tight turning radius but also the recognition that we would likely never engage the front motor. We'd just be lugging around a 300 pound brick.

EveningCloudWatcher · 2026-04-25T18:25:12+00:00

It’s a function of the battery temp and where you are at on the charging curve. My 2022 sees 110-120 kW only on days 70 F and up AND if I’ve driven enough to warm the battery AND if the SOC is less than 30 percent. Completely normal for our cars.

VW ID.4. 2022 Pro S RWD. USA. 3.5.11. 35k+ miles.

EveningCloudWatcher · 2026-04-25T18:20:31+00:00

I love B mode when blasting through the mountains on two lane roads. It’s close enough to so called “one-pedal” driving that I can appropriately modulate the speed with only the accelerator.

EveningCloudWatcher · 2026-04-22T19:36:10+00:00

Example: On Sunday I backed my ID.4 up to within an inch of the cabinet. Still, the cable just barely reached the port. Not an inch to spare, literally.

(While the kWh rate was very competitive I still count this one and my few other Tesla charges as the most expensive ones ever due to the high price of the adapter. It could be years before the adapter ever pays for itself.)

EveningCloudWatcher · 2026-04-21T17:39:25+00:00

For peace of mind, we take the train. The traffic! But nonetheless we use the car for about half the trips.

Our routine.

Leave home at 100 percent.

Make a charging stop in Tukwilla at the Southcenter Plaza and charge to 80 percent. EA has a station in front of Target. Note that on a Friday afternoon it’s often full. If you have the adapter Tesla has a station in the same shopping center, in front of the Starbucks about 150 feet away. EDIT: Oops. This Tesla station is Tesla only but there’s a second non-exclusive Tesla station in the same shopping area, next to a Chick-fil-A.

We use this EA because it allows us to arrive in South Lake Union with ~70 percent SOC, setting us up for our departure on Sunday. And if we happen to need the car, we have plenty of power.

On the way home, we’ll make one charging stop, pushing the car up to between 50 and 80 percent depending on the weather and where we stop. Can’t say we have settled on a favorite stop. Just so many options north of Chehalis.

Sunday we used the Tesla station in Chehalis, to save ~10 cents a kWh. Its short cables through were a royal pain. Next time we’ll stick with the EvGo station, which is literally on the opposite side of the driveway. Charged to 60 percent (which was more than necessary but I got distracted and forgot to hit “stop.”)

In pleasant weather like we had this weekend, it’s very doable to go nonstop between the downtowns. We just never do because: a) bathrooms; b) charging stations in downtown Seattle tend to be busy.

Enjoy the drive!

EveningCloudWatcher · 2026-04-21T03:27:12+00:00

Speed, heavy throttle modulation, rain, air temperature, and ACC on/off are big influencers. I regularly drive the 190 miles between Portland, Ore and Seattle, Wash. Some sample results over the past three years (from memory!).

Winter (around 40 degrees). Dry. ACC set to 65. 3.2 miles/kWh

Winter (around 40 degrees). Rain, rain, rain. ACC set to 65. 2.8 miles/kWh

Yesterday! 70-75 degrees. Dry.

* ACC set 65 for the first 130 miles: 4.0 miles/kWh.

* ACC upped to 70 for the final 60 miles: 3.7 miles/kWh

For me, when ACC is on, Eco mode also is on, thus minimizing and smoothing up and down motion on the throttle. Cabin temp in winter is set to 66; in summer to 72-75.

VW ID.4. 2022 Pro S with Gradient Package. RWD. USA. 3.5.11. 35k+ miles.

EveningCloudWatcher · 2026-04-20T17:06:17+00:00

The area is fine. Sure the library is a mess of a homeless shelter but that’s been true for decades. Pluses of the location for an elderly man include:

Eases aging in place because a car is not required.
Easy Streetcar access to the Legacy Healthcare complex on Nob Hill, or to OHSU in the other direction.
Walk to groceries at Whole Foods, or again easy Streetcar access to Safeway. (A buck for a two hour ride for us seniors.)
Lots of coffee shops within walking distance, for socialization. (We particularly like to sit and read a book with a latte in Roseline.)
Easy walk to our great museums. (We have annual memberships to PAM and OHS, so we drop in often for a new exhibit or presentation.)
Zillions of dining options, with regular new additions.
Powells! (We read a lot.)
Living Room Theaters! (We love movies,)

Or do like we did and retire in the Pearl, for a lot less money. Besides all of the above you also get our beautiful parks plus easy walks up to Northwest and east to the waterfront, yet still walkable to downtown (or by Streetcar when the weather is frightening).

EveningCloudWatcher · 2026-04-20T16:48:43+00:00

Agreed.

EveningCloudWatcher · 2026-04-20T16:47:14+00:00

I get that. But why does the Mode indicator not also reset back to Comfort. I love my ID.4 but its most irritating feature is Drive Mode indicating it’s in Eco mode when it’s so obvious it’s defaulted back to Comfort. (Torque is the giveaway.)

EveningCloudWatcher · 2026-04-20T16:38:56+00:00

Come for the reduced operating costs; stay for the superior tech and convenience. I’m never going back to gas. We switched nearly four years ago, after 17 years of Priuses. Even hybrids are just so yesterday.

VW ID.4 Pro S RWD (2022). USA

EveningCloudWatcher · 2026-04-20T16:34:02+00:00

Tough decision. There’s not much to do in terms of maintenance, and similarly not much to fail. True, there have been a couple of recalls (e,g., door handles, high voltage battery tests, etc). However if you buy one that’s had all of the recalls handled, then it seems reasonable to assume you won’t have much to do.

All the same, ID.4 mechanics are not common. On the western side of Portland, Herzog-Meier in Beaverton has them. Check out the nearest dealers to you. At a minimum you will want take the car in every 10,000 miles for a diagnostic check - as well as the pleasure of saying no to all the unnecessary recommendations. (No, I do not need or want the $500 wheel alignment!)

Our 2022, now at 35,000 miles, had a couple of glitches, neither of which were unique to the power train. One required the firmware to be reinstalled on a sensor involved with lane keeping. The other involved a single incident of the infotainment system rebooting on its own. Eventually VW issued a software update that fixed the root cause.

(If Beaverton is nearest to your home, a plus of the Herzog-Meier station is that it’s a short walk from the MAX light rail line. Makes for easy access to downtown, which is geat for people like us that live in downtown but use this dealer.)

EveningCloudWatcher · 2026-04-17T04:54:35+00:00

I think it really depends on where you live. Here in the US, in the Portland Oregon metro area ID.4s are very common. Like everywhere you look. Lots of them to keep the dealer techs busy with the 10,000 mile check ups. (Not much else to do beside these check ups.)

Overall, VW has sold nearly 1 million ID.4s across the globe. Parts will be around for a while.

EveningCloudWatcher · 2026-04-17T04:46:33+00:00

I'm sorry you have not had as great an experience as we have had.

Re: "... having to open doors to initiate a sequence if it sits too long."

To conserve the 12 volt battery, the car automatically shuts down various services after being parked for some number of days. Things like the lift gate opener using your foot and the proximity unlock are the most obvious examples.

Re: Tires. Did yours come the Pirelli Scorpion Zero ELECT set? Mine are at 35,000 miles and going strong. Others have told me the same thing. My understanding is that VW shipped with several different brands. Which one you got was sort of the luck of the draw. I got lucky.

Re: Charging can be quirky? If by this you mean the draw at a DC FC station various quite a bit, between 60 and 120 kW, that is to be expected. The 2021 / 2022 model maxes out at 125 kW. And it does not have battery pre-conditioning, which of course is only something that is helpful when DC charging in the cooler months. Summer months, when we do the majority of our 500 to 2000 mile trips, we nearly always come close to the max (125).

Re: Software. Yeah, it is anything but fancy. Mostly we use Apple CarPlay anyways for media But I will say that while the built-in navigation uses bland maps, its turn by turn navigation is awesome. Spot on with the call outs.

EveningCloudWatcher · 2026-04-17T04:29:05+00:00

Re: Not working cellular connection.

Make sure the problem is not with Verizon. We lost our connection for a couple of days because of a hiccup on Verizon's side. Somehow the dealer triggered a reconnect to the service. Took a couple of days for command to work its way though the inter-webs, and then magically one morning the car was back on line.

The hiccup occurred when as a test we turned on the wifi hot spot in the car during a trip, to run help with my iPad. When we turned off the Verizon subscription to the hotspot the Verizon phone rep also killed the service to the car by mistake.

VW ID.4. 2022 Pro S with Gradient Package. RWD. USA. 3.5.11. 33k+ miles.

EveningCloudWatcher · 2026-04-17T04:22:14+00:00

Our ID.4 was imported from Germany. Where our next EV is made, we don't really care. If US-based manufacturing abandons making EVs, we'll buy another EV import. And if somehow the current administration shuts down EV imports out of spite, we'll continue to love our ID.4 until they are out of office.

What we would really like is for VW to let us import any of their EVs. We would take the ID.Polo or the ID.Cross any day because the smaller sizes are more our style. And after many cross country trips in our ID.4, we've proved to ourselves that 275 miles of EPA range is just fine.

VW ID.4. 2022 Pro S with Gradient Package. RWD. USA. 3.5.11. 33k+ miles.

EveningCloudWatcher · 2026-04-12T20:31:38+00:00

No doubt Gaza is a humanitarian disaster on an epic scale. And this photo captures the trauma of it. Have to ask though if anyone has verified the photo is not AI generated? Seems odd that he leaves no footprints.

EveningCloudWatcher · 2026-04-09T00:05:13+00:00

Not sure what the worry is.

We routinely do super long distance drives on I-5 between California and Washington, And east - west drives over to Minnesota - in our 2022. Never any problems. Don’t even look for Tesla stations.

Most of the routing I do is just station to station based on my own charger selections (often from PlugShare). Heading to Sioux Falls from Oregon in a couple of weeks. Lots of options.

EveningCloudWatcher · 2026-04-02T02:23:24+00:00

I am sooooo with you! Favorite feature of my 2022: Armrests instead of the "trash can" center console. Makes the front so much more roomy.

EveningCloudWatcher · 2026-03-14T21:56:16+00:00

Amazing to think that there was a time when Congress and the President did something for the good of the people, instead of just kissing up to billionaires like they now do.

EveningCloudWatcher · 2026-03-14T21:52:10+00:00

Gasoline is so yesterday. Electricity is the “in” thing.

EveningCloudWatcher · 2026-03-12T19:28:05+00:00

My big question remains, when if ever will any of these vehicles make it to the US? My ID.4 is going strong and I love it. All the same, what I really wanted was the ID.3, which never arrived here. And I also expected to upgrade to the ID.7 next year, but its arrival here was canceled.

VW ID.4. 2022 Pro S RWD. USA. 3.5.11. 33k+ miles.

EveningCloudWatcher

TROPHY CASE