This data is from the NHTSA — the US gov't agency tasked with vehicle safety. Complaints are spread across multiple & redundant categories, & are not organized by problem.
So how do you find out what problems are occurring? For this NHTSA complaint data, the only way is to read through the comments below. Any duplicates or errors? It's not us.
On [XXX] approximately [XXX], I was in the drive-up line for Starbucks. The drive-up line was very slow so we waited for about 1/2 hour and I ended turning off my engine. I had plenty of room at least between 2-3 feet between myself and the car in the front. Then the line moved so, I put the car in Drive and covered the brake. I tapped the Gas/electric pedal and the car accelerated from 0 to 30 and lunged forward and I hit the car in front of me and they were pushed into the car in front of them. No one was seriously hurt, but police were called and ambulance arrived and found no injury - so there wasn't a police report. I was completely shocked that this happened so fast and I wasn't able to stop my car. So, when I hit the people in front of me. Their car was a Ford Mini-van older model. I dented their bumper, but see attached photos of damage to my car. I went on a VD owner website to see if other volkswagen owners had any acceleration problems and I was surprised to find so many people affected by acceleration issues. I decided to call Volkswagen headquarters and a case was opened. Volkswagen set up a data review with a Volkswagen technician. I dropped off the car at the dealership in Ventura. I was not provided with a report from the Data retrieval. I just received a letter from the case manager, Sarah that they did not find anything unusual. After reviewing the letter, they had the wrong date of my accident. The accident occurred on [XXX], and Sarah said the accident was on April 8, 2024. Of course, they did not find anything"?" I will enclose their letter and when I asked about the report or speaking with the technician, I was told that they do not give copies, nor provide information. On the website for Volkswagen ID4 owners, there are many claims of acceleration problems, This vehicle is an self-driving electric car. There is a recall for a software issue, that has not been established yet if it is related to acceleration. INFORMATION REDACTED PURSUANT TO THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT (FOIA), 5 U.S.C
The first time I was stopped at an intersection. Luckily there was no one in front of me as the car, without warning, accelerated at full throttle. Although my foot was on the brake, and I was braking as hard as I could, the car continued to lunge forward. It finally stopped and I backed up to my original position in the intersection. The second time it happened I was pulling into a parking spot in a busy shopping center. Without warning, the car accelerated out of control, and, although I was braking as hard as I could the car continued to accelerate forward. It jumped the curb, crossed the sidewalk, and hit a large commercial postal mailbox knocking it off of its base in the concrete. There was significant damage to the vehicle but luckily in both cases no one was injured. Had anyone been on the sidewalk in that shopping center they would have been killed. It is a miracle no one was injured or killed.
The screen showing the speed and the backup can stop working at any point leading to a crash and compliance issues. It's been several months and VW still has not come up with a solution for this recall and these cars are still on the streets, hence they are a major threat to consumer safety.
I drove an ID-4 down south and preparing for right turn. Suddenly, the car was accelerating to a very high speed with the accelerator not being pressed (spontaneous acceleration). I tried hard to press the brake, but no effectiveness. Instead of turning a 90-degree angle to the west direction, the car only turned 45 degrees toward southwest, hitting the safety island and jump over the island, then crossing the eastbound road, climbing up the curb and the left side of the car hit the street tree. The car then snaked along the sidewalk and grass toward west before it stopped. The car then is pulled to the body shop (Caliber in San Jose). 1) Accelerator and brake are both failed. The car spontaneously accelerates itself and cannot be stopped even pressing the brake paddle 2) In the collision, my left shoulder and neck got hurts. 3) Not yet. The car is in the body shop. 4) The car is in the body shop. Police has seen the car. 5) No. It happened suddenly.
The steering wheel controls on our 2021 Volkswagen ID.4 are haptic. That means that if you brush them with your fingers or hand with light pressure, they can activate. When leaving a neighborhood street, I turned the steering wheel approximately 180 degrees to pull out from a parking spot next to the curb. Upon releasing my grip a bit on the steering wheel (to let it rotate back to 'straight') my right thumb grazed the cruise control activation button (which is normally on the left side of the steering wheel). Since I had been using cruise control earlier in the drive, the cruise control resumed and the car accelerated without my providing any pedal input. Luckily I realized what had happened and pushed the brake pedal to cancel cruise control. The cruise control was set to 15 mph. I am thankful it was not set to something higher, like 65 mph. I don't know how fast the car would have accelerated in that case.
- Sunnyvale, CA, USA
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Yesterday, April 26th, 2023 the above vehicle was involved in a serious accident, possibly related to the safety recall for the high voltage cell module. My wife was driving the vehicle on her way to work, as she did for the past 2 years. Sometimes she gets coffee for herself and a coworker, so that day she turned into a parking lot of the last MacDonalds before her job. She pulled up to the drive thru lane as she did many times before. She was not distracted by the phone, and her radio was turned off. There was nobody else in her vehicle, and her thought was on the coffee order. As she was pulling up to the 2 vehicles in front of her, something horrible happened in the next 3 or 4 seconds. Her vehicle accelerated suddenly, hit the car in front of her, bounced off to the right, and kept accelerating for the next 50 feet before hitting a semi truck with such a force that the front end of her vehicle is completely obliterated and the semi truck frame was broken. Thankfully, nobody got hurt seriously, and there was no fire. The first question from the Police officer was whether she hit the accelerator pedal by mistake. She responded that she did not hit the accelerator pedal, and does not understand what happened. She was shocked by the sudden fury of her vehicle, and stated that she was unable to stop it. I believe what she is saying, because there was no reason for her to stomp hard on either pedal as she was coasting slowly, and with the vehicle's regenerative braking you only have to tap the brakes gently. If she tapped the wrong pedal by mistake, the acceleration would not be so violent. To do what the vehicle did in such a short distance, the driver would have to stomp forcefully on the pedal and keep it floored all the time. There was no need to do that, and she never even attempted to do such violent acceleration anywhere. There is a real possibility that the vehicle did an unintended full force acceleration caused by defect in the recalled module. GEICO has
My vehicle was in Travel Assist mode (i.e. Adaptive Cruise Control) traveling at around 65 MPH. A vehicle has cut into my lane and I felt that the car wouldn't slow quick enough to avoid a collision. I have applied breaks effectively taking the vehicle into my control and taking the vehicle off Travel Assist mode. When driver takes over by applying the breaks in this scenario, irrespective of how hard the breaks are applied, vehicle suddenly moves faster than expected for first few seconds. I had to apply the break harder than I would have applied if I was driving the car in manual mode to get the car to slow down.The expectation was that the vehicle slows down while applying the breaks. This would have caused a collision if I was not quick to react. There were no warning lights or messages on the dashboard prior to or during this incident. This could be a software issue which probably is conflicting between the breaks travel assist is applying and the breaking that the driver is applying. This has happened multiple time to me and on date mentioned on this my wife had same experience confirming that this is in deed an issue that needs some investigating into before it cause any accident(s).
We-??ve been leasing a Volkswagen EV car ID4. And after a recent software update, we got problems as in the following. Intermittently when coming to stop, The vehicle is difficult to stop and Pedal pressure seems low. When we experience concern, the accelerator does not seem to react in the same way. As a result, the car failed to stop at short of stop line. Volkswagen sent us a recall notice of High voltage sudden reset error what promote acceleration failure. But our car has not only acceleration but brake issues more than dozen times in 3weeks. We believe we are in very delicate and dangerous situation. But VW doesn-??t provide a substitute vehicle, as Volkswagen view problems as vehicle to be still drivable. I strongly disagree with their view, since we will be in serious danger without secure brake and acceleration.
The Driver Assistance feature of the car shuts down due to a Software error. It will eventually reset if the car is parked and turned off for a duration of 30 to 60 minutes. Some users have reported that the error does not clear without disconnecting the 12v battery. Problem first appeared in the id.4 2021 models in the summer of 2021. VW has issued a software correction for the vehicle in Europe, but that update has not been made available for the US customers. This causes the collision avoidance system to go offline and the driver is warned to drive with extreme care! In some cases the vehicle speed also stops displaying.
6/21/22 When I was pulling into a parking lot space, the car suddenly accelerated and the steering wheel turned uncontrollably, I could not stop the car, the brakes didn't respond at all. The car was driving by itself, I couldn't do anything to stop it, until I ran into two parked cars where it finally stopped; thank god no injuries. The car was undriveable, and was towed away, I'll have it inspected by the body shop and see if it can be repaired. This was a terrifying experience not being able to control the car, the car pretty much went into run away mode. I hope this gets reported to VW and an investigate gets conducted to find the root cause it as this could happen again to anybody.
My vehicle's stability control system will activate in error to slow the vehicle when traversing moderate corners at speeds of approximately 25 to 35 mph. When this happens the vehicle experiences no actual loss of traction but the ESC warning light will flash on the dash and the vehicle will cut power and slow the vehicle with pulsing applications of the brakes by 5 to 10 mph. This is an unsafe scenario because I am unable to accelerate during these episodes even if needed and the vehicle slows to a speed well below the normal traffic traveling speed. In long sections of winding road I have had to disable the system to be able to drive normally, without interference in my ability to accelerate, and even then the stability/abs system will activate if I touch the brake pedal at all, still with no true traction loss. I am confident that it is a system failure because it occurs very predictably on certain sections of twisty road. I have experimented and the system will inappropriately activate when I drive 30 mph on the curves but provide no interference when I drive the same section at 40 mph. This issue has been reported by numerous owners on the idtalk.com forum, seeming to be specific to the AWD models, with one owner reporting he was told it is a software related issue with no imeadiate fix after having his car inspected for an extended period of time. I have reported the issue to my local dealer.
While driving, both the driver-??s and center console displays stopped displaying information and went blank. The panels were still on but nothing displayed. The ID.4 console panel is known to not turn on or be blank, the solution is to press the console power button for 10-15 seconds to reboot the system. I held the power button and the system did restart and both the drivers and center console panel turned on. However, upon turning back on, I received a progressive series of messages that each driver assist module/sensor was no longer available. Finally received a yellow message stating Electrical system not working correctly and to have the vehicle serviced. Pulled over and turned the vehicle off and on which cleared the electrical system not working message. The problem has not repeated itself. VW dealer has not yet seen the vehicle. This vehicle has not have an electrical systems failure warning before. Vehicle was at approximately 50% charge at the time and I was going 25 mph. Safety is at risk by losing all vehicle data and speed. Then rebooting system to get the screen back caused a start to electrical systems failure.
I was on the freeway going 70 mph. Red warning lights came on saying to stop car immediately. The car lost all power. I was able to get on the shoulder and called State Patrol because I was barely off a busy freeway. They advised me to get a tow truck. The Infotainment system was completely blank. All that worked were my emergency flashers. After ten minutes of trying to turn car back on, everything re booted and I was able to drive home.
Pulling into a parking space, using reiterative braking (B Mode). When applying brakes, car bolted and could not be controlled. It jumped a curb and drove straight toward a building. Brakes would not respond. Steering would not respond. I managed to steer the car avoiding the building but taking down a bench and ripping up the turf in front of the building. Car made a complete u-turn before coming to a stop. At that point, all electrical systems shut down, including the outside mirrors--they retracted. There was damage to exterior of the car-- a torn side molding and scratches and minor dents from bushes and the bench that was destroyed. The infotainment completely shut down. when I finally was able to restart the car, the systems came back on slowly, one at time. The car was towed by VW Roadside Assistance to a collision center for body repairs. It will be towed to the dealership after body repairs to diagnose the problem. I did not want to drive the car, not knowing if it is safe to drive. I had to file an insurance claim for the damage to the car and to the property that was damaged in the process. No other cars were damaged.
After receiving a service on the vehicle, I pulled out of the dealership and went left to go up a slight hill, I got half way out and the accelerator pedal would not work. I pushed down to the ground and the car would not go. There was a car coming towards me and swerved to avoid me after a second it kicked back in. This hasn-??t happened since, and I have heard of this happening after a service appointment from another owner. Note this has not happened since. No warning lamps or other messages. I scanned the car with OBD device and no warnings found. Car is available for inspection upon request. This impacts safety as after service the car should not have any acceleration issues, in this scenario if the car will not go, there is a potential of a crash.
A D V E R T I S E M E N T S
- Oxnard, CA, USA