VW ID.3

It was a must add for me and supposed to be a fair bit better than the tesla version I use daily.

Doubt i will use the parking side of things bar trying them out.

If you're doing decent mileage I guess it'd be important.

If you're pottering around doing a max of 30km per day (outside of rare trips), it's probably not worth it.

That's my reasoning anyway.

Pity you can't add the 360 degree for like €200 or something.

That's fair enough. If I still lived in Dublin I probably wouldn't bother with it. The light advantage over the Born wouldnt be nearly as important to me either.

The newest iteration of Travel Assist has Lane Change Assist and does overtaking manoeuvres when you indicate. It only works on motorways but seems like it resolves some of the problem you had.

Maybe so. I still don’t think I’d pay the money for it though.

monroe live. teardown of AP550 motor. Not a particular vw fan. He is really impressed with this piece of german engineering. Rivian is his no1 and ap550 second.

Got my GTX Performance Plus today. Really a big improvement on the 2022 Pro model I traded in. A few observations:

• The infotainment and vehicle configuration software is much much better than software 3.2 that I was using on the old car. Very responsive albeit more complicated. I imagine six months down the line I'll still be finding little adjustments I didn't know I could make.

• The HUD is useful. I had heard that it was now enabled to give the augmented reality prompts when using Google Maps or Apple Maps. Turns out that that's OS-dependent. If using Apple CarPlay, only Apple Maps will give the AR prompts. If on Android Auto, only Google Maps (I assume). Which is a small downer as I still find Apple Maps to be noticeably inferior to Google Maps. Waze also doesn't do them at least not on an iPhone.

• I find that the extra screen real estate isn't necessarily used wisely in CarPlay: it just makes all the interface elements bigger. Still 2 rows of icons when if things were zoomed out a bit, there'd be room for 3. I hear that's coming in iOS 18.4, but I also hope it adjusts the size of the interface for apps also.

• The stereo is an improvement over the 4-speaker one in the old car, but it's not like it's streets ahead. The subwoofer adds something but it isn't going to be delivering block rocking beats (not that I expected that). It definitely plays louder without distortion than the old one did.

• Travel Assist is great. I haven't yet figured out how the lane changes work with the indicator and when I tried to do one, there was no AR animation in the HUD. I think I need to read the manual. But I could see it really making a difference on long drives (we go Dublin to West Cork and Dublin to Clare quite a bit).

• The acceleration is noticeably stronger than on the old car, but I don't believe there'd be a noticeable difference between the 240kW motor on this car and the 210kW on the non-Peformance GTX. It's very quick (quicker than any other car I've owned) but the 2022 Pro was also quite quick by my lights. Top speed is irrelevant: I'm never driving even more than 10kph over the motorway speed limit.

• Complaints about road noise (from Battery Life on YouTube notably) seem to me were either overblown or due to the config of BL's car (snow tyres perhaps). This car is quieter than my Pro Model in every way: the motor is quieter, the interior is quieter (insulated glass) and the tyres (Turanzas) are super quiet.

• Self-parking was super easy. I haven't yet set it up with the remote control though. I have tried remote locking/unlocking from my phone though. Works well.

• The ergoactiv seats are very comfortable. Took me a while to find the lumbar adjustment, but that alone makes them much more comfortable than the ones in my previous car.

• Sports mode has an artificial external noise (like on a Taycan but more subdued). No idea how loud it is outside the car. I turned it off in Individual mode.

• IDA (the new AI assistant) seems like it might actually be useful.

I'm really going to enjoy driving this car. It's just much more refined and clever than the last one. Annoying little weird things in the old one (like it would constantly reset the desired charge to 100% every time I parked at home) are gone.

It’s a pity VW Ireland don’t offer the same value proposition with the GTX in the rest of the ID range like the ID4, ID7 and Buzz. I’m guessing VRT distorts the pricing at that end of the market.

Have a few little foibles creep in over the last few weeks.

First is two warnings. "Please clean front sensors" and "Parking manoeuvre brake not available". Sensors aren't dirty, so they've obviously thrown a wobbly and the self parking brake can't work without them. Need to bring her to the dealer to sort under warranty.

The ID light doesn't always come on when charging. Not a big deal, but used to always work.

The options for internet connectivity (VTX and location data or something) randomly turn off.

Maybe she needs a reset or a reprogram. The sensors definitely need sorting though.

Will ask them what it'd cost to trade up to the GTX while there.

Get ready for this - they may tell you the sensor was damaged by a ‘stone chip’, there is a vw service bulletin somewhere saying not to give warranty on the parking sensors.
I left mine in under warranty and they billed me for €86 for diagnosing the faulty sensor (which already showed on the parking display as faulty) and €360 to replace it- think I got the sensor oem for €40 and popped it off myself, no tools needed, local garage could also do it.
I refused to pay the diagnostic fee for a car that was under vw warranty.

Your best bet would be to ring around.

Interesting situation on SOH of an ID3. Currently on DD- private sale of 2020 UK registered car. Low mileage and is claiming 98% SOH with screen scan included. 5 Yr old car??????? - what do ye think?

When I sold mine it was at 92.5% after close to 100k and 4 years old.

I'm scratching my head on this one. The general theory consensus is that the biggest degradation happens in Yr 1 and is quoted at being upwards of 5%. Thereafter degradation is expected to be minimal at perhaps 1% per year. Therefore you would expect a 5 Yr. old car to be hovering around 90% on average. If the 98% figure is accurate it suggests at least that time based degradation is not a significant factor- also possibly that this is a statistical outlier on the LHS of the degradation population curve. I'd like to see an external test done by Aviloo or similar to confirm (or otherwise) the scan reading provided.