NEW VW ID.4 Review: The Best Family EV? | 4K

this is the vw id4 and it might look like any other family suv but it's actually one of the most important cars in vw's lineup right now and that's because this is the first ever electric car that vw are going to sell globally they're going to flog these things in china europe and america because electric family cars are hot property right now and they're hoping that this one is the one that people are going to turn to and why not because it seems to tick quite a few of the boxes that you might want from a family electric suv it's practical it's spacious it's quite nippy it's got good range and it looks pretty decent as well there's a lot riding on this one is it any good [Music] this is the vw id4 first edition the first edition is a limited run and when these sell out it will be replaced by a host of other different trim levels let me talk you through the headline features they cost about 40 000 pounds it'll go head-to-head with the likes of the nissan aria and the tesla model y when they're released and of course the ford mustang machi it's got a 77 kilowatt hour battery pack which will do 310 miles in terms of looks not exactly adventurous but remember vw are trying to sell this car in as many markets as possible so they're trying to play it safe and have it appeal to a wide cross section of people but i do like some elements of this i do like these aggressive yet assertive looking headlights this thing isn't actually a light bar that's just plastic there is a light bar on the back though i'll show you that in just a second and i'm not 100 convinced by this little plastic section down here but on the whole decent car good proportions it has the size of a mid-sized suv but the interior dimensions of a larger suv very clever packaging let me show you the sides you've got 20 inch wheels at the front 20s at the back and you'll notice you have disc brakes at the front but drum brakes at the back why is that is that a cop out by vw well they say that electric cars very rarely use their disc brakes at the rear and what ends up happening is that it's the electric motor that harvests the power and slows the car down so if you had disc brakes that end up going rusty and being completely redundant so they've ended up putting drum brakes there because that means you don't have to replace disc brakes when they go bad if you believe that i've got a bridge in london i'd like to sell you let me show you these uh i don't know it might be true who knows let me show you these door handles these might look like normal door handles but they're actually not they use a switch underneath you put your fingers under here it unlocks the car and you pull it they don't actually move what happens if the car runs out of batteries they've thought of that what you do is you pull this really hard and the whole thing moves and that allows you to unlock it like a proper mechanical door handle why they didn't just install proper mechanical door handles in the first place beggars belief i don't know maybe it's an aerodynamic thing maybe this helps the car cut through the air more efficiently but then you look at the size of these wing mirrors and it makes you wonder how much more efficient these are still look at this actually let me show you this this section pops off and you have a physical key which you can use to unlock the car when the batteries run out if the batteries run out but again i'd have preferred normal door handles back here you have the charging port you only get a charging port on the right hand side but it accepts both ac and dc rapid charging i'll show you the back these lights are lovely actually the proportions of this car from the rear look really nice but you've got this light bar across the back end lovely intricate detail a lovely 3d effect from the lights i think they've done a really good job with that let me show you the storage there is no frunk in this car no fruit but you do have a massive boot it's 542 liters and considering that the ford mustang mark e is about 400 litres this is far bigger far more usable far more practical plus you've got loads of tethering points you've got hooks for your shopping and underneath you have an area dedicated to storing your normal charging cable and also your granny charger so plenty of storage in there and the seats actually fold forward as well to give you even more space to play with i've done a really good job with that one thing that is slightly annoying is that this doesn't come with a power tailgate there's a little place where the button might go for a power tailgate but you actually have to operate it manually and that might be annoying if you're in a wheelchair or you have limited mobility so slight inconvenience there but let me show you the rear definitely no inconvenience in the back of this car it's got so much space it's the size of a mid-sized suv on the outside but gives you the room of a larger suv on the inside and look at that loads of legroom plenty of headroom in this car and even though the seat is a little bit high because they've raised the floor up to accommodate the batteries it doesn't feel uncomfortable and in fact if you're a child being higher up allows you to see a little bit more over the tops of the occupants in front of the car so it's actually a lovely space in here plus you've got two usb ports there's no independent temperature control for the rear of this car but you do get plenty of space in the door binnacles you've got armrests you've got cup holders you've got isofix two of them in the back one in the front one thing i'm annoyed about though is the fact that you've got this glossy piano black section here on the door handle whoever designed this clearly does not have children that is going to get scratched to oblivion let me show you the front right there's a lot to like about the front of this car the first thing that i notice when i get in are these really cool plate and paws icons on the accelerator and brake pedal that's a really nice touch not 100 sure about these seats though this brown and blue suede thing is um it looks interesting but the longer you look at it the more you think nah not for me in terms of space you've got plenty to play with you've got two cup holders up here you've got this roller blind section down here which gives you even more space you can get two more cups in there there's a little space for your mobile phone down there some ambient lighting i wish they'd made better use of the space down here though actually because that could have been an area for keeping something or other but clearly they didn't bother with that in terms of screens well i've gone on record as saying that i'm not the biggest fan of vw's new infotainment setup and i'll talk more about that in just a minute up here you've got this instrument cluster mounted on top of the steering wheel so when you move it the whole thing moves i think it works pretty well it looks a bit weird but does the job but i do like this drive selector twist it forward to activate drive twist it back to reverse or push it in to park right time to unleash [Music] hell [Applause] [Music] actually okay so hell isn't what you want from this car it's a family suv so you want it to be more like heaven don't you and actually first impressions it's very nice it does that thing that electric cars do so well it's really really refined in terms of comfort it's pretty good these seats are not too hard not too soft they're very supportive you also get a little adjustable armrest up here which makes long journeys that little bit more bearable and also there's plenty of adjustability in the seat so i'm going to drop this right the way down to the bottom so you can see how low you can go in this car that is about it so you can drive it if you're really tall because you get loads and loads of headroom in here what about if you're really short bear with me caller i'll crank it all the way up to the top surprisingly still got quite a lot of headroom to go i was expecting to go a little bit higher than that so if you're really short and you're expecting a really commanding driving position then um you might be a little bit disappointed but i still have quite a good view around the car i know exactly where the edges of the id4 are as for the steering well it's nice and light it's actually got a 10.2 meter turning cycle which is very impressive for an suv this is a very maneuverable car that you're going to have no problems whatsoever driving [Music] the suspension isn't quite as good as i might like though because it's actually quite jiggly this is a very heavy car it weighs 2 600 kilograms and what that means is they have to apply stiffer suspension stiffer dampers in order to cope with the weight and what that results in is a quite nervous ride it's not unbearable by any stretch of the imagination but even on reasonably smooth roads it's not the smoothest ride the brakes meanwhile are strong and consistent on the open road but it took me a while before i was able to stop smoothly in slow-moving traffic there is no one pedal driving option but you can select from two levels of brake regeneration by twisting the drive selector from the d position to the b position and vw have even added a bit of technology to make your life easier on the move one thing i want to talk about is the light bar that runs along the full width at the bottom of the windscreen essentially it lights up to communicate with the driver so here's how it works if i try and use the voice activation feature for example hey id hello id it's not working never works i'm going to come back to that in a minute but when it does work the bar lights up to let you know that the car is listening it also works in conjunction with the sat nav for example if you've got an exit coming up on your left hand side the bar will light up on the left to let you know or if you're about to have an accident the bar will flash bright red to let you know that maybe just maybe you might want to apply the brakes what's it like in terms of performance well it's not going to set your pants on fire but it does have a 200 horsepower motor connected to the rear wheel and that's enough to supply not to 62 in 8.5 seconds and 99 miles an hour flat out i had my foot to the floor just said this is not the fastest car in the world but it's nippy enough it's got 310 newton meters of torque on the low side for an ev if you ask me but there's plenty there to get you out of trouble or to overtake as for handling well it's not the most fun in the world certainly not on a par with the mustang machi for example that thing can drift around corners if you're so inclined this will not indulge in any sideways action even though it's rear-wheel drive it's more competent and capable than fun shall we say what's less good is the infotainment system in this car i feel like i lay into vw products on an almost daily basis but if you're gonna spend 40 grand on an id4 you need to know what you're getting yourself in for and the infotainment system ain't the best first and foremost there's no volume knob secondly the volume slider up here is temperamental to say the least the steering wheel buttons are so big and so ill-placed you press them accidentally all the time you can't easily see the battery percentage you have left only the mileage and that calculates how you have been driving and not how you will be driving so you can't work out what happens if you slow down and drive sensibly we need a percentage on the screen the voice recognition is completely confusing to activate it you say hello id instead of hello vw which you say on vw's other products which makes you think isn't this a vw aren't they connected in some ways it's just utterly utterly confusing and the last one is the most infuriating for me and that is there is no independent window control for the rear windows to control the windows in the back you have to press the rear button and then the same button that you use to put down your front window which to me just makes no sense whatsoever volkswagen sought it out what can i do for you please connect a phone via bluetooth first i don't remember that you should not i don't what are you doing what are you teaching what is going on all right i've had enough let's carry on let's talk about range now which is very important in an electric car this first edition comes with a 77 kilowatt-hour battery pack which is enough for a range of 310 miles on the wltp cycle you're also going to get the option in the future of a car with a 55 kilowatt hour battery pack and that's going to be good for a range of just over 200 what do you get for your money in the real world well i was doing the school run in this car which is a mixture of 30 mile an hour 60 mile an hour and stop start traffic so a little bit of everything and the car told me it was getting 4.4 miles per kilowatt hour if you multiply that by 77 that's the capacity in the batteries then you get a total range of 338 miles and that raises an important question actually because i do a 10 mile journey to school so that range is enough for me to last about three weeks without recharging so do you need off street parking do you need your own personal charger if you have an id4 potentially not as for motorway range when cruising at 70 miles an hour i achieved an estimated range of 177 miles cruising at 60 miles an hour returned a more impressive 263 miles nearly 100 miles more range if you're willing to sacrifice a bit of speed you know what on the whole this is a really good family car electric or not i love the fact it's got an enormous boot the back is super spacious super practical the range is terrific i think for my needs anyway and also it drives pretty well it's not as fun as something like a tesla model y for example or a ford mustang mach e and it's not the fastest thing in the world but in terms of the way it drives and what it offers and how it will fit in with your lifestyle i think vw have done a really really good job with the id4 i mean apart from the obvious all this stuff down here the infotainment system i could do without but you can plug your phone into that and use apple carplay or android auto so on the whole not a bad family car not a bad family car [Music] you

Channel: AutoTrader

Views: 107,575

Rating: 4.9093242 out of 5

Keywords: vw id4, vw id.4, vw id4 review, id4 review, id4, volkswagen id4, volksvagen, id4 interior, id4 boot, vw id4 space, vw id4 interior, vw id4 price, id4 price, id4 range, vw id4 range, vw electric, id4 design, vw id4 screen, vw id4 sat nav, vw id4 doors, vw id4 charging, id4 charging, id4 performance, id4 0-60, Rory reid, autotraderuk, electric car, electric car review, should I buy an electric car

Id: Of_0wRGn3lM

Length: 15min 14sec (914 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 21 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/wobmaster]

lmao how does he talk almost a minute about the light bar, a VERY visual feature, without showing it once. like.. what??? (i know how it looks, but its such an odd choice for a review video)

[u/StLandrew]

I found the review quite fair. I don't have the ID.4 but I do have the 3 which I popped on here about 3 weeks ago. All that Rory criticises heavily about the ID.4's infotainment area can be said about the 3. In terms of user experience, I've kind of given up on it for the moment. I don't have time during the week to get my head around the last foibles, so I learn a little more at the weekend. It's ok-ish, I guess. But like Rory says, if you're paying proper money for a car, you expect a lot better. Nobody is expecting a Tesla like experience, but just something a little less stupid and laggy. The Voice Command control actually makes one laugh, it's so bad. Just the other day I asked. "Hi ID." [long pause before it acknowledged] "Navigate to NN Oakley Road, Southampton" [I was in nearby North Baddesley] It responded, "did you say Oare, Faversham?" [that's in Kent, some 120 miles away] and then proceeded to give me a list of destinations, none of which were remotely near to anything I had asked for. Truthfully, it has yet to get one single destination correct by voice command, and I do not mumble or have any strong accented speech, even for a Hampshire speaker. And I was speaking while the car was stationary with windows shut. It did turn on the heating once when I announced that I was cold. That was just an experiment, and I wasn't really.

Peculiarly, I have found the slider volume control to be the best performing thing. It's quite easy. The Climate Control, Radio and Map pages are quite nice too - there you go, something positive. I don't find the steering wheel buttons a problem. I don't really use them and they don't get in my way. The car itself is very nice, as I imagine the ID.4 is.

The drum brakes do make sense. They are said to be 100% maintenance free also.

If you want to see a direct comparison with the Tesla Model Y there is one on the Fully Charged Show, where Robert Llewellyn road-tests the ID.4 and then He and Ben Sullins compare specifications. Spoiler: The Model Y wins on every practical metric.

[u/badcatdog]

I was surprised to hear he thought the suspension was "Jiggly", "Nervous ride" "Not the smoothest ride". I thought it was supposed to be one of the smoother?

[u/upL8N8]

Rory's review is ok, but has issues. I don't get why he made the the little chide remark on the rear brakes. Rust and deteriorating rear brake pads from lack of use are a known issue with EVs. Drum brakes make sense, and will likely be adopted by more EVs in the future. They likely also help with efficiency.

I don't believe he mentioned the car's price.

He compared it to the model Y and Mach-E. The Model Y isn't available in the UK; is the Mach-E? If he's going to point out performance differences, he should also mention price differences, as the ID.4 is significantly cheaper than the model Y in the US, and can be quite a bit cheaper than the Mach-E.

VW really did make a major unforced error with the capacitive touch buttons. It's literally the #1 most complained about item in the car. Imagine had they just put regular buttons and knobs in the car.... the majority of the car's criticism goes away. I doubt it would have even cost an extra $50 per car. Throw that $50 into the price tag and be done with it. People will pay $50 extra to NOT have capacitive buttons...

As to the infotainment, the second biggest criticism... they really need to get on the ball and put out some software updates to deal with the lag time and bugs. Rory didn't mention whether this is a production or pre-production vehicle. Therefore, it's hard to say whether VW put out any updates to solve some of these issues. If they're still having problems, then question becomes whether they can be fixed in software, or if it's an underlying problem with the hardware. Maybe not enough RAM or processing power. I imagine the developers just didn't do a good job optimizing the software.

Obviously the Q4 e-tron is a much better interface that gets rid of both sets of issues, but it also costs quite a bit more.

Otherwise, this seems to be a solid car at a great price.