The head unit in the 2013 (and possibly other year models) SEL trim level is complete crap. Very slow to respond and especially the backup camera. I could reverse out of my garage, go down my driveway, back into the street and put it in drive to start going forward and then the backup camera image would appear on the head unit. Not really needed at this point now that I'm going forward. I've since turned in the car on the whole diesel gate thing (which was total nonsense). Overall the car was fantastic for the 55,000 miles I drove it and it got ridiculously good fuel mileage, but that head unit sucks bad.
My entire system powers off/on/off/on/off all by itself. I'm on the 4th Unit (RSN-510) compliments of VWoA. I think they've figured out, it's NOT the unit, and it's not a Characteristic of the System, it's a Safety Hazard.
Second Dealer has had it over a week now, but at least they are going past the "unit swap", but waiting for days to hear from VW Tachline. Nice when your own "team mates" don't want to help you. Poor guys in the Service Shop, get beat up from me and VW, that's not cool VWoA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rJW5nKaV6I Watch this, it lasts for 1 minute, then it's all down hill.
The Nav/Maps/IPod, the whole entertainment system on the 2013 Passat makes the car not worth having. There are problems on a continual basis with the various parts. VW is now stone walling about the issues. If you are thinking about buying this car, be kind to yourself and don't.
I purchased this car back in December of 2012, I started to notice the camera taking a while to boot up. As a design engineer i just figured the cold weather delays the boot up timing.
I then started to see the navigation unit response time is terribly slow and began to restart at times. I took it in and got a replacement unit. Unit worked fine until last weekend I started to notice the slowing down and the restart happened again.
I took it in to the dealer they ran diagnostic codes and saw a code about FM antenna short. They called the tech. line and the response they got was stupid. Apparently if you use a large size SD card it can cause the navigation unit to slow down due to memory use. If that's the case VW has to really consider having a talk with the engineers who designed this. However, the navigation unit is only playing the songs off your SD card it is not storing them in memory. This is similar to CD player.
Is anyone else out there having this problem?
- hkadry,
Dearborn, MI, US
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A D V E R T I S E M E N T S
The head unit in the 2013 (and possibly other year models) SEL trim level is complete crap. Very slow to respond and especially the backup camera. I could reverse out of my garage, go down my driveway, back into the street and put it in drive to start going forward and then the backup camera image would appear on the head unit. Not really needed at this point now that I'm going forward. I've since turned in the car on the whole diesel gate thing (which was total nonsense). Overall the car was fantastic for the 55,000 miles I drove it and it got ridiculously good fuel mileage, but that head unit sucks bad.
- Jeff T., Bentonville, AR, US