Should I trade my ID.4 for a Mach E?

[DennisD]

That's the thing...if VW had made good on the software updates this would be a lot tougher choice and I'd be leaning a lot more towards keeping the ID.4. Then there are the things VW can't bring to the '21s because they didn't include the hardware: parking assist, lane change assist, 360 camera. I have considered ordering a '23 Pro S Plus, but with the nearly $4k increase in price it's a tough pill to swallow.

That "pill" will go down much easier with $7,500 extra to spend via the tax credit you would receive by purchasing the MME.

Once again, I think this trade is not a question of "if" but rather a question of "why not".

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[SWO]

I'm biased, but the MachE is a far better vehicle, IMO. I'd take it and the $7.5k.

From what I've read, the ID4 has a lot of problems and I'd take Ford>VW for long term reliability.

 

[jason330i]

We've got a 22 MachE and are waiting for a 23 ID4. I vote for keeping both. ?

 

[RosarioM]

tl;dr; I have a '21 AWD VW ID.4 Pro S w/ Gradient that I've been driving since February and I love it. My order for a '22 RWD MME Select w/ Comfort & Tech is scheduled to be delivered in about a month. Should I trade the ID.4 for the MME or keep it?

The day is nearly here where I must make the hard decision to either keep the ID.4 I've been driving since February or trade it in on the Mach E I ordered that same month. Late January of this year I started car shopping and I knew I wanted to get an EV, but it was just a question of which one. I wanted to look at the EV6, Mach E, ID.4, and Model 3. I quickly ruled out the Model 3 due to price and not qualifying for the federal tax credit. A dealer near me had just received a Mach E GT which I took for a test drive and absolutely loved, but the sticker ($74k) was well outside my max budget ($50k). I used the Ford configurator and submitted an order for a Select, but the next week the dealership called to let me know that Ford had closed the order book and they could not process my order. So I went to test drive the EV6 and was left unimpressed both by the car and the dealership. I visited a VW dealer that had ID.4 to test drive, but couldn't sell. I was really impressed. It wasn't exciting, but it was very comfortable, inviting, drove well, and seemed to offer a lot of value. I still really liked the MME but the ID.4 wasn't bad. Feb. 15th my Ford dealer called to let me know the order book had re-opened and so I went in and placed my order: Select w/ Comfort & Tech in Rapid Red. I signed a purchase agreement for MSRP ($48,690) and resigned myself to the 6+ month wait the dealer warned me I had ahead of me. I kept thinking about that ID.4 though, and when things heated up in the Ukraine I knew gas prices were going to skyrocket, so my search for an EV was suddenly a lot more urgent. As luck would have it, my local VW dealer had an AWD '21 Pro S w/ Gradient in moonstone grey that the buyer had backed out of and I could have at MSRP ($50,870). It was just over my max budget, but with gas prices going up I told myself I'd pay myself back through the savings on fuel, plus I could always trade it on the MME when it arrived and have the extra tax credit as buffer against value loss. I closed on the ID.4 on Feb. 25.

Over the last 7 months I've really fallen in love with my ID.4. I drive 25 miles to and from work each day on rural highways and it makes those trips comfortable and quiet. My kids are in sports that have me traveling all over and the range is sufficient to get me to all of my destinations on a single charge. Plus our very tall family all fit comfortably. My wife is a big fan of the massaging seats, which I had originally taken as a gimmick. I live in a relatively flat area with very little elevation change, but we do get winters with ice and snow. I'm not sure if the AWD has had a chance to really shine on my drives, but it has always felt confident on the road. That said my ID.4 does have some frustrating issues. I love that I can sit and the car is ready to drive, but the infotainment system is painfully slow to boot up. I can be out the driveway and well down the road before it is ready for me to set my destination in the nav, and that's regardless of whether I choose the native nav or android auto. Although not frequent, it has also had a series of worrying warnings come up. For instance, the entire infotainment system rebooted mid drive. Sometimes I get yellow warnings of "electrical system malfunction" that go away after a restart. I once had the tail lights stay on all night for no reason. I've had a cascade of errors during the drive letting me know that all of the driver assist systems had failed. These don't happen often, but they are enough to damage my confidence in the car. VW has long promised "quarterly OTA updates" but has yet to deliver even one to their customers in North America.

Last week I received the email that my Mach E order had completed production and was expected to arrive at my dealership between 10/26 and 11/01. I checked with a few online car sites to see what sort of trade-in value I could expect for my ID.4 and it seems like $50k is the average. The only change in my MME order is the Park Assist Prep kit (-$325). That gives me the idea that I could potentially go to my dealer and do a straight trade from my ID.4 to the MME with nothing out of pocket, or possibly even a little cash back (my state cancels out tax on trade-ins). What's more in the spring that would mean another $7,500 of tax credit which my tax liability would allow me to take advantage of.

My hesitation on this trade is that I'll be giving up a lot of features. I'll be moving from AWD to RWD. I'll actually be losing acceleration (the AWD ID.4 is slightly faster than the RWD MME Select). I'll lose that gorgeous panoramic roof. I'll lose the adaptive projector headlights for the Mach E's fixed reflectors. I'll be losing the interior ambient lighting and massaging seats. My passenger seat will go from power memory to manual adjustment. On the other hand, an extra $7,500 in my pocket would be really useful right now with one child in college and another that I need to get a car for. I don't really need the AWD in my area, and I think the exterior of the MME is better looking than the ID.4. I have no idea what the infotainment software is like for the MME, but I'm not holding my breath that VW is going to update my ID.4 anytime soon, so I have that frustration to look forward to if I keep the ID.4.

For you Select owners out there, what would you do in my shoes?

Keep the ID.4. After what I’m going through right now with the HVBJB, I truly believe Ford isn’t ready to sell EVs.

 

[RedDeadRegen]

My family has enjoyed our MME, so much so that we'll be replacing our RWD with a GTPE.

However the two main complaints from passengers have been
1) getting in and out of the back seat (and carseat) due to the sloping roofline and
2) the bumpy ride quality in the back seat.

I will also say that after just completing a move, the sloping roofline can also be a bit of a nuisance if you're packing up the cargo area. I am convinced that I can fit more stuff in my GTI than the ford.

I like the utility of the frunk, and my wife never uses it.

 

[scoopman]

I have a somewhat unique perspective. Here's a photo of my stable:

We have had an early 2021 ID.4 Pro S (RWD) since June 2021. We've had zero problems with it. It beds next to Mach N Cheese, a 2021 GTPE.

The ID.4 is a really pleasant family car for my wife, and she is the primary driver as her mommy mobile for our kids. She liked it, and it's her car, and we had the opportunity to lease it at a competitive rate right when it came out.

TLDR: I can't really stand driving the car and would trade it for a select any day.

-- Gosh is the thing slow. I mean we're talking me who has blown 2 HVBJBs and gone thru my delivery tires in about 5k miles, but wow is it slow. Great turning radius, but so many other annoying things, such as how it has no 360 camera, how it turns itself off whenever you adjust your butt in the seat to make sure you're not going to hit something when you reverse. No true 1PD regen, and it acts like an ICE car with an creep on idle. So patronizing to me that I can't even adjust those behaviors.

-- Human user interface in the car is dreadful. Everything is capacitive touch and insanely bad. The steering wheel buttons I touch in error 10,000,000 times, and the climate control and volume is just horrible to use. Like it has only one set of window buttons, and a stupid capacitive touch toggle to switch them from front to back, so invariably you're always rolling down the wrong windows. The VW adaptive cruise control is so complicated (and you just hit buttons that change things about it anyhow) that it's always a frustrating experience.

-- Everything about their software and screen is horrible, and I would trade your car just for this reason alone. There's never been a software update, and the software is incredibly unstable and buggy. Unshippable in the state they shipped it in terms of boot time, stability, bugs, UI conventions, etc. Android Auto in particular is a #$% show and I'm really surprised (as someone who used to be quite involved in this stuff....) that Google let them ship this. CarPlay is slightly more stable, but also generally low stability.

-- You think FordPass is bad? Try using VW's current app (which took over from an even worse app).

VW hasn't had charge timers working for the entire time we've owned the car, they just shipped it without them working at all. I have to rely on my ChargePoint to not charge the car at a really expensive time as none of the VW stuff is remotely reliable.

Thankfully, lots of decent things about our family mommy truckster: it's comfortable and probably has better ride compliance than the MME Select (but no sportiness at all). It has been completely rock-solid reliable. And we got a really good deal on it as it was just out and under-the-radar in terms of demand and before many of the gas prices shot up last year.

Most importantly, my wife is happy with the car and that's the most important thing in its favor.

 

[adam.jones]

...
The ID.4 is a really pleasant family car
...
Everything about their software and screen is horrible

Oh man, so much of this resonates with me. My ID.4 does a really good job at being a car that gets me through my commute with minimum fuss. It's comfortable and reliable....but boring. You've touched on several frustrations I have with the car. The native software is a dumpster fire. Trying to get the native navigation to take an address, either by voice rec or text is an exercise in futility. The radio is one of the strangest, most unfriendly designs I've ever encountered. Fortunately I'm able to avoid those by using Android Auto. Even so, I do wish I could interact with AA before I'm a mile down the road. So question: is Android Auto available more quickly in the MME vs. the ID.4?

Yes, the VW mobile app is bad. It's painfully slow and woefully underfeatured. That said, I have been able to remote start the climate in my car...but only if I remember at least 10-15 minutes before I intend to go to the vehicle. It takes several minutes for the command to go through, and then another several minutes to condition the car, so unless I give it plenty of advance warning the app is hardly worth messing with.

Scheduled Charging - my electric utility will be switching to Time of Use billing next year, so I made sure to spend a little extra on a EVSE that supports scheduled charging since this feature that should have shipped with my car is still broken. Even so, this should be something I can trust the vehicle for. This is fixed by the latest software, along with other things you mention like auto hold, but it is an open question if our North American ID.4's will ever see it.

The AWD version of the ID.4 is truly a different animal from the RWD when it comes to acceleration. My good friend has a MME Premium AWD ER and we've spent a lot of time comparing our vehicles. My ID.4 isn't as quick off the line as his MME, but it's not far off. If I see that same sort of close but not quite difference from my ID.4 to the RWD MME Select I think I'll still be plenty satisfied.

Steering wheel controls are a minor frustration I've learned to live with, but I have to agree with you. I can't simply adjust cruise speed by feel because I'm just as likely to cancel cruise altogether while searching for the button than perform the function I want. Physical controls on the steering wheel mean I don't need to take my eyes off the road to use them. And what was VW thinking not backlighting the temp and volume controls on the main panel? It boggles my mind that even with the '23 models they still haven't addressed this.

I haven't had an issues with the Adaptive Cruise Control / Travel Assist. It took some time to get accustomed to the amount of pressure that adjusts speed by 1mph vs. 5mph. It also seems to panic pretty quickly. It is overly cautious about slowing down for traffic turning in front of me and slow to resume speed. I can have my hands on the wheel and it will suddenly throw up a red "driver not detected" warning with alarming beeps. I've nicknamed my car Karessa as she always demands to be touched.

I really appreciate your unique perspective here. Even with the warts I still love my ID.4 and I wouldn't feel stuck with it. I wanted the MME from the start though, and I think if I can get the trade done with nothing out of pocket I will switch to the Mach E. As others have said, even if it turns out I regret the switch I can always order another ID.4 and pick up some of those features and updated software in the process.

 

[scoopman]

AA and CarPlay startup far quicker and more reliably in the MME than in the ID.4.

Even without the difference in acceleration, MME is so much better in the areas I outline.

One other difference in the ID.4's favor: the cargo area is bigger and more square, so it's a little more practical in the back. Of course, the MME makes up for this by having a sizable frunk.

Oh man, so much of this resonates with me. My ID.4 does a really good job at being a car that gets me through my commute with minimum fuss. It's comfortable and reliable....but boring. You've touched on several frustrations I have with the car. The native software is a dumpster fire. Trying to get the native navigation to take an address, either by voice rec or text is an exercise in futility. The radio is one of the strangest, most unfriendly designs I've ever encountered. Fortunately I'm able to avoid those by using Android Auto. Even so, I do wish I could interact with AA before I'm a mile down the road. So question: is Android Auto available more quickly in the MME vs. the ID.4?

Yes, the VW mobile app is bad. It's painfully slow and woefully underfeatured. That said, I have been able to remote start the climate in my car...but only if I remember at least 10-15 minutes before I intend to go to the vehicle. It takes several minutes for the command to go through, and then another several minutes to condition the car, so unless I give it plenty of advance warning the app is hardly worth messing with.

Scheduled Charging - my electric utility will be switching to Time of Use billing next year, so I made sure to spend a little extra on a EVSE that supports scheduled charging since this feature that should have shipped with my car is still broken. Even so, this should be something I can trust the vehicle for. This is fixed by the latest software, along with other things you mention like auto hold, but it is an open question if our North American ID.4's will ever see it.

The AWD version of the ID.4 is truly a different animal from the RWD when it comes to acceleration. My good friend has a MME Premium AWD ER and we've spent a lot of time comparing our vehicles. My ID.4 isn't as quick off the line as his MME, but it's not far off. If I see that same sort of close but not quite difference from my ID.4 to the RWD MME Select I think I'll still be plenty satisfied.

Steering wheel controls are a minor frustration I've learned to live with, but I have to agree with you. I can't simply adjust cruise speed by feel because I'm just as likely to cancel cruise altogether while searching for the button than perform the function I want. Physical controls on the steering wheel mean I don't need to take my eyes off the road to use them. And what was VW thinking not backlighting the temp and volume controls on the main panel? It boggles my mind that even with the '23 models they still haven't addressed this.

I haven't had an issues with the Adaptive Cruise Control / Travel Assist. It took some time to get accustomed to the amount of pressure that adjusts speed by 1mph vs. 5mph. It also seems to panic pretty quickly. It is overly cautious about slowing down for traffic turning in front of me and slow to resume speed. I can have my hands on the wheel and it will suddenly throw up a red "driver not detected" warning with alarming beeps. I've nicknamed my car Karessa as she always demands to be touched.

I really appreciate your unique perspective here. Even with the warts I still love my ID.4 and I wouldn't feel stuck with it. I wanted the MME from the start though, and I think if I can get the trade done with nothing out of pocket I will switch to the Mach E. As others have said, even if it turns out I regret the switch I can always order another ID.4 and pick up some of those features and updated software in the process.

 

[Regulus7]

I bought an ID.4 RWD gradient in November of 2021. I also had an order for a Mach E GT but I wanted to get the $7500 credit in 2021 so I got the ID.4. I liked the car. The turning radius was awesome. But RWD in the snow really sucked and the infotainment was buggy. Worse of all it made me feel like a grandpa driving it. Sure it was comfortable. But I am at an age now where I really do not have to compromise. So in June when my GT came in I sold the ID.4 with 11k miles for $3k less than what I paid for it. But with the $7500 credit I made out ahead.

Also there was another reason I sold it. I had driven it on a couple of 400 mile trips and the DCFC experience was really something i was not ready for and my wife just hated it. This was not totally ID.4 specific as peak charging was like 70KW and the EA 3 yr free charging was nice. But rather I came to the conclusion that we could not have 2 EVs. Rather we needed a long range ICE or plug in hybrid to bridge us for longer trips. So that was also impetus to sell the ID.4

The MME GT is a fun car to drive. The infotainment is way better than VW but still nowhere as complete as what Tesla offers. All the legacy automakers have a long road to climb on bringing us really good in car tech. Both the ID.4 and MME are well made and feel solid. The MME is more of a head turner while the Id.4 is a soccer mom car that will not draw any attention. Range wise the ID.4 was easily able to get 4.0 mi/kWh summer driving vs the best I can get on the MME is 3.3 to 3.5. But the Id.4 was RWD so that explains that.

Overall, I am not so sure I would trade in a AWD ID.4 for a RWD select. The GT costs nearly $20k more than the base select. Is it worth it? Well styling wise I think so, power wise for sure and upgrades wise also a yes. But if I had to stay in your budget then the ID.4 AWD top of the line gradient would be my preferred pick over the Select RWD. If you were looking at a premium with AWD then it would nudge back to the MME.

Life is too short to stress over all of this. Maybe the easiest course of action is to determine a resale price point for your AWD ID.4 and figure with the $7,500 tax credit how much you can save and if that is enough $ for you to be happy spending it on something else then do it. But if not, then just keep the ID.4 and don’t sweat it

 

[voxel]

With the added features of the 23 ID.4, 360 camera, premium sound, heated rear seats, parking assist, lane change assist and a few minor tweaks it gives the MME Premium a run for the money.

VW removed premium audio from the 23 trims.

https://www.vwidtalk.com/threads/vw-premium-sound-removed-usa-2023-models.8012/

Folks think HVBJB issues are bad but the ID.4 is glitchfest.

My co-worker had his 2021 ID.4 AWD Pro S shutdown on him on the road while he was in Naples over the Labor day weekend. 8K miles. Mine did that at 500 miles and I dumped it less than 2K miles after.

I'm personally not a fan of the Select trim because of the smaller battery and lower range. If you are happy with the ID.4 keep it.

 

[Triggerhappy007]

Unfortunately keeping both for any amount of time comes with a high price tag. If I trade in the ID.4 I get to cancel out the price of the new car by the value of the trade-in for sales tax. With the ID.4 being roughly equal in value, that means I'd pay no sales tax on the trade. If I keep both and sell one outside of a trade I'll end up paying close to $3,500 in sales tax.

That's only true if the dealer is buying the car for comparable price to the market. My past few experiences, the dealer could not come close to Carvana, Vroom, etc. I got more from them without the sales tax savings. That was before the car shortage, it might be different now.

 

[Garbone]

Drop the ID4 like a bad habit. That thing is just more mehhhh bland than a M3 or MY in white (can never tell the two apart).

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