How winter weather affected range on my VW ID.4 EV

The charging speed in cold weather has been a complaint with the ID.4. The ID.4 lacks any pre-heating support for the battery for fast charging.

BHPian StarrySky recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

I had the opportunity to take the GTX out on a highway drive a few days back.

The trip was about 190km (one-way) and a large part of that, maybe around 150km, was done on cruise control at the speed limit (100 km/h).

I had pre-heated the GTX before starting, and it still hadn't finished charging to 100% when I started. I started the trip with 98% battery. I reached the destination with 39% of the battery remaining.

A 200kW charger was available at the destination, so I plugged in. Based on the first part of the trip, I knew it would take around 60% battery to make the trip back. I added some buffer for colder conditions and some for any unexpected detours and decided to charge back up to 80%.

The charging, however, was slower than I had hoped for. The session started with the charging speed around 50kW and it never ramped up. The max it got to was 53kW. So charging back up to 80% took me 37 mins and just under €11.

The charging speed in cold weather has been a complaint with the ID.4. The ID.4 lacks any pre-heating support for the battery for fast charging. This meant that even after driving more than an hour at a constant 100km/h, the battery was not at the optimum temperature for fast charging. Newer ID.4s with ID Software 4.0 now have pre-heating support. It is rumoured that it may be added to older IDs like mine via OTA, but that remains to be seen.

For the return trip, the temperature had dropped by a few degrees, and there was no opportunity to pre-heat the car from a plug. Consequently, the consumption was slightly higher.

The trip also showed the difference the temperature makes on the consumption. Earlier on this thread, I had written about a highway driving test on a much colder day (around -23C). The consumption on that day was around 30.8kWh/100km.

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