2025 Volkswagen ID.4: What to check before buying

The center display goes black, freezes, or reboots without warning, often while the car is moving and sometimes at highway speed. Climate controls, navigation, audio, CarPlay, and the backup camera stop working until it restarts, and one owner says the instrument panel blanks too. Switching to wired CarPlay did not help, and one report says no fix was available yet. Other complaints describe a child lock error that disables windows and locks, repeated strandings from electrical failures, one sudden surge while parking, and one fire-related report from a public charging session.

Sudden acceleration at parking-lot speeds is the common thread, with drivers saying the vehicle surged forward while their foot was on the brake. One driver says regenerative braking mode was on and the accelerator was never touched. Two of the three complaints ended in crashes with parked cars, and one repair bill came to about $17,000. Owners report no warning lights before the surge and no explanation of the cause from the dealer. Every event happened at very low speed, which makes it a serious loss-of-control risk near people and other cars.

Unintended forward lunges from a stop appear in one crash-related report, where the vehicle surged in regenerative braking mode with the brake applied, hit a parked van, and the airbags did not deploy. A separate complaint describes no audible pedestrian alert while reversing, at 3,100 miles. In that case the dealer said the vehicle was not equipped with the feature and made no repair. Only two complaints are filed here, and they describe unrelated problems: one is unintended acceleration, the other a missing reverse warning sound.