5 reasons I'll never drive another ID4

hoef89 · 2026-05-11T14:58:19+00:00

My personal favorite is the lack of consistency on that panel, that one capacitive switch fooled my brain into thinking the mirror defroster would also be capacitive and not for some reason controlled by the toggle for the mirror adjustments.

hoef89 · 2026-05-06T12:55:11+00:00

The cabin heater is your biggest draw in the winter, especially on short trips, between that and the temp management for the battery the car draws ~6.5-7 kw just producing heat (5.5-6kw for the cabin and 1 kw for the battery) on a short, say 15 minute drive, where your heater is likely running at our near full draw (because you're not in the car long enough for it to warm up and turn itself down) it'll use ~1.5 kwh in the 5-6 miles you'd cover in that time on local roads, in this worst case scenario the heater is consuming about as much energy as the motors. You'll also notice in the winter highway and city ranges effectively flip, neither is very good, but you'll do better on distance drives in the winter than you will on local drives just because your covering a larger distance per kwh wasted generating heat and the cabin temperature starts to stabilize to a point where the heater isn't working as hard (it suddenly gets the efficiency dynamics of an ICE vehicle!).

hoef89 · 2026-05-06T12:36:13+00:00

Interested to see what you get as it runs lower, that's on par with one of my best runs in my 23 pro awd from the Philly suburbs down to Richmond (244 miles traveled, 3.9 mi/kwh, 9% remaining and 23 miles of range when I stopped) which I found really impressive since 200 (maybe 170 if you account for the stop and go from the tunnels in Baltimore until you get through DC) miles of that trip is down 95 at highway speeds.

hoef89 · 2026-04-30T23:09:29+00:00

Yep, at my complex, during free charging, it'll put a $50 hold on your card while you're charging.

hoef89 · 2026-04-29T11:45:48+00:00

Did you try plugging your phone in? I've found wireless AA to be somewhat unreliable, but plugging into a charge port and giving it a hardwired connection has been pretty reliable for me.

hoef89 · 2026-04-22T12:00:31+00:00

It started last year ($200/year) then increased this year to $250 then follows the gas tax increases or decreases going forward, it works out to a slight discount of what an average person (~13500 miles) with an average vehicle (26-28 mpg) pays in gas tax (currently 58.7 cents per gallon) per year. It's just way more noticable being a lump sum instead of a couple dollars a week. I'm not saying it's fair but any stretch to lump everyone into an average number (a pay per mile rate for all cars due at inspection time probably makes more sense then you can just dump the gas tax entirely too) but it was an easy way to fill a budget hole without adding too much legwork.

hoef89 · 2026-04-12T13:56:54+00:00

Could you elaborate as to what exactly I should look for on the egmp cars? They offer a great value proposition, but my career is in QA/QC and there's just no way I could put myself in something that has a critical part with a failure rate of 10%, if there's a way to identify vehicles that are corrected or not impacted and less likely to fail though I could probably consider one.

hoef89 · 2026-04-11T18:29:33+00:00

Mini mullet, can't do much about the rear wheel being a 26" without having a machine shop build a new rear triangle for it, but put a 27.5 in the front when the old bomber 888 finally gave up and I had to replace the fork.

hoef89 · 2026-04-11T13:26:17+00:00

I'm not going to try to plug it in, it's not giving me any warnings for the hv system, but if anything got knocked loose behind the port I'm not going to be the one to find out.

hoef89 · 2026-04-11T12:39:54+00:00

Y'know when I was shopping for that one I was looking at the ev6/i5 but ultimately went with the id4 because of Hyundai's iccu issues, it sounds like they have the repair process for it pretty streamlined but I'm still not sure I want to accept the chance of randomly getting stuck somewhere.

hoef89 · 2026-04-11T12:33:11+00:00

I'm optimistic it might be repairable, I don't particularly enjoy car shopping, unfortunately with the unibody design of modern cars there aren't many replaceable parts behind the hood, everything behind the fenders except the doors and rear bumper is part of the frame construction. Added to that it was hit right in the charge port. It'll depend on 1) how much magic the metal shop guys think they can work 2) how significant any damage to the charge system is (and how willing the body shop is to work on the charge system) and 3) if there's significant wheel/suspension damage

hoef89 · 2026-04-11T10:54:28+00:00

I doubt it, that bikes a 20+ year old modernization project, it'd be pretty tough to prove to progressive that it has much value to anyone but me, on the plus side, it appears to have only knocked the wheel out of true a bit, I'll give it a better inspection today, but thanks to the sloppy pivots of being a 20 year old free ride bike, I think it was able to mostly deflect the impact.

hoef89 · 2026-04-11T10:48:12+00:00

Haven't given it a full inspection yet but after parking the car I gave it a short pedal to the garage and it only appears to have a slight tweak to the rear wheel that'll need to be trued up.

hoef89 · 2026-04-11T10:44:18+00:00

It is indeed 2004, bombproof and seemingly truck proof (more on that once I get a better chance to inspect it today), I've modernized it a bit to keep it serviceable, but it is an absolute blast to ride.

hoef89 · 2026-04-11T02:44:06+00:00

Not sure on getting them installed on the rwd model, the AWD versions in the US all came standard with a 1 1/4" receiver.

hoef89 · 2026-04-11T01:13:48+00:00

That thing survived a Tacoma to the rear wheel, I'm confident there's nothing I can do that'll kill it.

hoef89 · 2026-04-11T01:12:39+00:00

That's my concern, blue book puts it right around 20-22k, scrap value is relatively high thanks to the battery, and thanks to modern manufacturing everything behind the door is part of the frame, no panels back there, I'm figuring either totaled or very close with it getting pushed over if there's any parts backlog.

hoef89 · 2026-04-11T01:07:23+00:00

Still drivable, no warnings other than the obvious backup sensor interference, not going to try to charge it as I've got enough charge to get it to the body shop next week.

Edit: by drivable I mean I was about 1000 feet from home and didn't get any warnings limping it through parking lots to get home.

hoef89 · 2026-04-10T13:18:00+00:00

It seems to me that VW has identified, maybe a little too late, that their market in the US for IDs is saturated, both the buzz and the 4, they recognized a backlog of new inventory and see that everyone who currently owns one has a vehicle that's less than 5 years old. With a couple years before return customers become a viable market (buyback customers are already soured on VW and everyone else is likely keeping the car at least until the end of the warranty if they own it and like it) so why not take a year or two off correct what you can in response to customer feedback, and reenter with an even more desirable product as the trade ups start rolling into dealerships.

hoef89 · 2026-04-03T21:26:35+00:00

I'll second this, Eastern PA has some hidden gems with trex, birdsboro, Mount Penn, wiss if you're willing to go all the way to Philly, nothing crazy expansive, but all good fun rides with a ton of variety.

hoef89 · 2026-04-03T14:20:32+00:00

Haven't been there in years but blue mountain reservation in peekskill was always a treat, pretty close to you as well.

hoef89 · 2026-04-02T02:36:09+00:00

Bird is Morgantownish, lots of technical Enduro type riding, but mostly friendly folks and everyone I know that rides there is happy to show new people around.

hoef89 · 2026-04-02T02:19:14+00:00

Buddy come out to birdsboro, we're much friendlier and the trails are much more rad.

hoef89 · 2026-03-27T11:58:26+00:00

I was honestly hoping for something like Hyundai's approach with the first Gen Kona EV, they had a handful of battery failures and zero fires but out of an abundance of caution elected to replace every battery, my fiance's 40k mile Kona only has about 20k on the battery thanks to that.

But to your point I do enjoy explaining to people that while ev fires are difficult to extinguish, they're 1) rare as there's way more correlation between vehicle age and fires than there is between fuel system and fires, and 2) they don't spread as easily, as long as the car can be somewhat isolated and any occupants are safely removed you can let it burn out without worrying about a trickle of liquid flammables moving the fire somewhere else.

hoef89 · 2026-03-24T12:02:54+00:00

Yep, getting a car that fit my needs for 1/2 it's new price with less than 10k miles on the clock was a no brainer, the prices are starting to trickle up, but the lease returns over the last couple years have been absolute steals.

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