There was a part in there about the cables I didn't quite get; the owners had received a 16A charging cable that they had to go back to the dealer to sort out but the reviewers were implying that bad things could have happened if the cable was used with a higher rated wall charger.

Didn't seem quite right to me that that would even be possible.

 

Don’t worry - there’s plenty of electricity boffins on here who will be along shortly no doubt to help....

 

The cable should have a resistor built into the plug which tells the EVSE what current the cable is capable of pulling. It would have only pulled 16A and would not have melted the cable.

 

Poor electrical wiring knowledge aside it was good to see Tesla owners being so positive about many aspects of the e-golf. What I took away from it was very much the messages on here, heat pump is the way forward, swiping on the infotainment is an annoying gimmick and many dealers are still struggling to understand EV’s

 

Range is good we drove 108 miles at 70MPH with no range anxiety in freezing conditions with the heater on.
2 minutes later...heater in this car is crap the range drops to 60 miles when you turn it on. LOL

I will post the official numbers again from VW even though this is no longer available on their website:
Outside temperature 5 degrees (car heating on)
City range = 150 with heatpump, 126 without heatpump (19% difference)
Country range = 122 with heatpump, 115 without heatpump (6% difference)

The 108 achieved in the video is close enough (considering they did it in varying temperatures below 5 degrees) for me to believe VW figures above is correct at least until we have some more real world tests.

PS To be clear, I am sure the range does drop when you turn the heater on but it will soon increase again once the cabin has reached the set temperature and the heater is no longer at maximum current draw. I just feel this specific topic is presented very poorly in the video.

 

I thought their dismissal of carnet was very unfair. My own experience is that it works most of the time. I think it didn’t work for them in their review is because they are not the car owners and therefore not set up to access the carnet features. Carnet allows you to start (and stop) heating, heated windows and charging.

 

Hi. Funny thing, this is our car. The reviewers (our neighbours) had access to the account. To be very honest, our own experience with carnet has been nothing short of shocking (speaking as a software engineer, though I am by no means the guru our kind neighbours make me out to be in the video). We park it on the drive behind our house every day, and whether preheating works is a coin-toss at best, and certainly takes 30-90 seconds to kick in from the point where you press the button on the app. It never works if the car was plugged in and charging overnight.

Don't get me wrong, we're very happy with the car, but I have already talked to friends of mine about coming up with a widget to stick in the canbus port under the dash, wire it up to a raspberry pi and bluetooth and/or wifi, and then at least we will get reliable access to the preconditioning, charging and battery state information whenever we're in range (which we would be when it's parked on the drive). I wouldn't be giving that serious thought if the app behaved anywhere near reasonably.

I've already tried hooking the car up to our wifi, that helps with it having traffic info when we leave the house but not with any of the carnet access woes. This makes sense given the online documentation which states that the e-remote functionality is completely separate from the data connection used by the satnav etc. (which is *dumb*, but totally plausible because it's simpler to engineer and allows VW to make fleet folks pay for the extra of having a "business" SIM card slot put in).

As you can see in this thread: Car-Net we are hardly the only people to have had a useless experience with Car-Net.

 

The resistive heater in my B250e draws around 5kW max I believe.

If the eGolf one is similar that means it would be pulling approx 1/4 of the energy required to drive at 70mph (around 20kW) so up to 20% drop in range would be expected in Arctic conditions, certainly not a true 50% drop as the GOM initially suggested.

 

I thought the review pretty closely mirrored my first month with my eGolf and I agree with just about everything in it: generally positive, quality build, awful customer service, dreadful car net. I thought it was interesting that the reviewers owned a Tesla and seemed quite impressed with the range of 108 miles - albeit in pretty bad conditions, lots of 70mph and temperatures around freezing.
With my car despite a 2 week conversation with VW customer services they still insist the first service is due in 1 year and not 2. The customer service and not being able to preheat with carnet are the most annoying aspects of ownership so far.

 

I thought the review pretty closely mirrored my first month with my eGolf and I agree with just about everything in it: generally positive, quality build, awful customer service, dreadful car net. I thought it was interesting that the reviewers owned a Tesla and seemed quite impressed with the range of 108 miles - albeit in pretty bad conditions, lots of 70mph and temperatures around freezing.
With my car despite a 2 week conversation with VW customer services they still insist the first service is due in 1 year and not 2. The customer service and not being able to preheat with carnet are the most annoying aspects of ownership so far.

Does carnet give a service interval?

 

Good review of the car but not so sure on their chat about other things, I think they need to do a bit more research on a few things.

AFAIK Tesla don't use heat pumps, at least the Golf gives you the option to add it.

The cable isn't dangerous, it will just slow the charge down to 3.6kW. No risk of a fire, just a slow charge.

Testing the exhaust fumes on monkeys. Yes German auto makers have commisioned tests that included that, but it wasn't only VW, BMW and Daimler were also part of the group that put up the funding. It seems VW have been singled out because the car used was a Beetle and they are already tainted because of 'Dieselgate'
As much as I don't like the things VW have done it doesn't put me off buying what every reviews says is a very good car.

Maybe try ordering a Model 3. We'll all have our e-Golf's before anyone can even place an order for the Model 3, and still have change left to order the heat pump and the reversing camera.

 

Does carnet give a service interval?

My carnet app is showing the total mileage (which is correct) and also the days/miles to the next inspection service (1071 days). I’m a bit confused by this last figure!!

 

You've got Stephen's second year.

 

The Inspection Service may be due at 3 years, you will probably need an ‘oil’ service at 20000/24 months though.

 

I watched the review yesterday and have watched many of others they have done as well which are well balanced. I was going to post a comment but others had put right the cable current concern which has protection built in.

Overall they gave a good review of the car and I agreed with most of the content. Things like the boot space were glossed over and the dealer supplying the correct cable which pretty much everyone has experienced is very poor.

The main dealers and the general lack of knowledge in MK is really not helping. I returned to work this week and no one even thought Volkswagen made an electric car let alone 2 BEV’s and Hybrids they just thought it was an ICE car.

One of the things I love about the car is it’s so normal and so easy to drive, the lights are as they showed are brilliant at night and it’s relaxing to drive. I have the heat pump and I find the heating is brilliant especially when we have had the odd day of 7-8 degrees where it’s even more efficient.

The dealers just want to sell the cars but if orders are being delayed by the factory it’s frustrating absolutely everyone as is Car Net. I have about an 70% success rate using it I heated the windscreen and the car this morning and tonight again but the last 2 days it’s been completely impossible to even log in at times.

The testing on monkeys is just wrong on all levels but as @Woodulike points out this seems to have stuck and the other manufacturers seem to have taken less flack. To be fair a good number of those who commented on the vlog did point this out.

On range I am still averaging 4mi/kWh and a lot of the driving has been at night and the vast majority has been in very cold conditions so 108 miles in those conditions in a car without the heat pump is good and way better than in the recent 3 way test.