VW ID.4

Yeah I haven't bothered. I was also quoted over 400 for a service of the ID3. It only has 12k km on it, so I'm not going to bother with that either, as the car doesn't need it. 3 year PCP up next year. I may have to hand it back at the end. If I do, I'll likely jump to whatever the cheapest EV out there is, so likely a different brand than VW.

VW are certainly ruining good cars with their "premier" after sales

The problem with moving to another brand is they're all going the same direction. As I mentioned Kia are only giving customers 2 free OTA updates, although they at least offer an update via USB

Tesla have been charging for connected services for years now. BMW and Mercedes were charging to use the automatic headlights or something

Nothing like milking every last penny from the customer

Maybe someone will start making EV kit cars, I'd be happy with one of those 😂

On a €40k plus car, just keep saying that every time you look at those prices

I don't mind paying for services but there should be choices available. Why can't I use my own data SIM for example or just hotspot to my phone? Why can't I download updates offline and load them onto the car

Why do I need to run a load of connected services through the manufacturers servers when I could run my own? It's basically just a messaging server for the car, nothing much going on there. Why do they need all my data to sell to insurance companies?

I understand the manufacturer doesn't want the hassle but I think it would go a long way to provide some software images and a couple of wiki articles, plus a warning that if you get it wrong then that's entirely your problem

Can't wait until some hero releases a hack to get the paid services for free 😂

Don't believe that line you've been fed by the car manufacturers, there's a variety of options available to enable an offline update and ensure security

Also considering VW recently lost a load of customers data to hackers, including the GPS data from vehicles, you'll have to excuse my skepticism of their security

And I'm well aware other companies also have security issues, I was reading yesterday about a group of hackers who were able to take over a Nissan Leaf remotely

It is, but unfortunately the way the manufacturers seem to go about it is very bad practice

I was at a security talk years ago and the soeaker was talking about different security concepts

One was the idea of security through obscurity and walled gardens. This is what VW and others seem to use mostly

The data connection in the cars are heavily locked down so they only have secured access to VW servers. In addition, VW doesn't publish any information about how to remotely use their services

It seems secure but there's two problems. One is that when (not if) someone discovers a vulnerability then there's no guarantee you'll be able to find it

The second is that it creates bad habits. Because you think you're in some impenetrable fortress of software then you don't need to worry about what is inside the car.

Since a modern car is a collection of systems, each with their own firmware, from a variety of vendors getting the whole thing to work together is a pain. VW seems to have an incredibly cumbersome software qualification process given the amount of time between releases

So you can end up with a situation where you're releasing software that's months old and has known bugs simply because that's what you started the process with

Another approach is security through openness. Sounds backwards but the idea is that a well designed system is basically unbreakable even if someone knows everything about it

This is generally done by using well known and open standards and software, many of which have been independently verified as secure

Obviously not every piece of open source software is secure but it does mean someone can look at your code and verify the claimed security

However this involves a degree of trust between the manufacturer and the customer since you'll be expecting them to read and follow the procedure regardless of how simple you make it

It also involves giving customers access to the information and tools they need to perform an update, which potentially puts your tools out there for scrutiny. Ask yourself, if you won't eat food that you don't know the ingredients then why should it be okay to drive a car that you don't know how it was updated?

It would also take potential customers away from their garage network, which seems to be a pretty contentious topic for VW

Anyway, my point still stands, offline updates and services can be done securely (they were done that way until a few years ago) but it's unlikely any car manufacturer will open themselves up enough to make it possible

I've got by for decades without being able to pre heat a car from my living room, I'll be grand. VW on the other hand, these things chip away at your brand. I paid 48k for the ID3, yiz can fook off with your shakedowns. Definitely less likely to buy VW again for now.

So, following on from my previous post, I'm getting a new door handle for free 😂

To give the full story, I got the car back yesterday with new reversing camera and door controller. Apparently after replacing the controller the driver's door handle was showing as faulty

This is the door handle that the keyless entry stopped working on after the 3.7 update, probably because I had to force the door handle up and do the emergency open a bunch of times

So the garage said they'd replace it for free. I'm guessing it's a combination of realising the handle was faulty all along and that I'd probably have burnt the place down if they'd been after me for another €500

Well I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth

I just remembered that my NCT is today so that's going to be fun. Hopefully they don't fall it on the fault on the door handle

Update: The car passed the NCT, no issues with the door handle

Just means now I'll physically have to go to the car and check what the battery is ….. painful . I'm allergic to paying VW €155 to do a basic/ essential task related to owning an electric car

On an iPhone, if you add the VW widget to your home screen it will show range and battery % remaining. Sometimes it can be slow to update but it works without a subscription.