Reset.
That’s one word that other e-UP / Mii / CitiGo e iV owners would nod to. In some cases, it’s great to start with a reset car, but mostly it’s quite annoying. Every time you “start" the car, many functions are back to default factory settings.
ECO modes are off, A/C temperature is set to 22 C and AUTO, Driving mode is set to D0 (no recuperation), the lane assist function is back on if switched off.
Even the last played radio station is back to preset #1!
(22.0 C and AUTO A/C every time you start the car)
It would have been great if the car could have remembered these settings, instead of setting default every time the key is turned. A simple stop to charge the car means you have to set it all again when you drive on.
Some have managed to hack the car via ODB2 prevent the Lane Assist to turn on. But that means it’s always off - you cannot then switch it on by using the designated switch. Speaking of that lane assist, I understand why some will want to disable it: It makes more problems than it solves. First of all, it’s NOT an “auto pilot” of any kind. It’s simply meant to keep you in the lane, should you become distracted for a split second. If you try to let it drive the car, you will find that after a few corrections without your intervention, it will beep and switch off (until it senses you grab the wheel again and steer it). So don’t believe it will save your life if you fall asleep. It won’t. A false sense of added security, at best.
Mirror: The one inside the car, not the side mirrors. With this small car, the windscreen is of limited size. If there is a right curve ahead, the mirror blocks a significant part of the view. You have to duck down to see properly. Maybe this is not a problem for people with a very short back? But now that I mention size, the car has nice room, also at the back, considering it’ only 3.6 meters long. I can sit comfortably at the front, then move to the back seat and still have enough space (I am about 185 cm). As our kids are 5 and 6 years old, they definitely have enough space. I would guess they won’t be just as happy if we still have this car in 10+ years from now. Unless it’s because they got their own license and want to borrow the car to drive it themselves!
For some reason, neither the car nor the Skoda Connect app shows what level you are charging at. You have to calculate it yourself, or use an ODB2 dongle/app. Because the data is there of course. Also, the battery level shown in the car is in 1/4, 1/2 and so on, with the smallest division being 1/16. It would have been better for me if it was divided into 10ths, rather than 16ths. But for some people, using “half” and “quarter” might make more sense. Further halving 1/4 gives 1/8 adn again, 1/16th. Having mentioned that, let me just say that the car works fine without the app (smartphone). You can sit in the car, put the key in the ignition, start the car and go. Radio, media (SD card) works fine as well, but there is no navigation without your own separate device (typically a smartphone). The car dashboard does show remaining time to charge. When the battery gets hot, expect the estimate to slide over time, so the actual charging time to full will be more than it says initially.
The Skoda Connect app has been working OK for us. Others have reported problems to connect, or that it’s too slow. It does take up to 20-30 seconds at times, to update the result of changes to, say, air conditioning. Once set up, I couldn’t get to where I wanted initially in the app. There is a picture of your car, with 3 small icons for different functions. I couldn’t find the settings for charging, air con etc, until I found out that I have to click the image of the car itself, to open what I would cal the main menu. It definitely has room for improvement, for user friendliness. And they should sort out that scheduled charging, as well as being able to simply set a standard “max charging level”. It's way too complicated.
Trip counter reset? Maybe my wife or myself did it by accident but on our long trip, the trip counter reset at some time, at or before 3000 km. I don’t know if this is a limitation, or our finger trouble.
Charging level alarm: It would be great if the car could have an alarm go off, when you reach a certain charging level. Then you can take a nap and be awakened when you got what you want. Should be easy to implement? These are all minor things, really, but most of them should be so easy to fix for VW. If you ever want to do a trip over 500 km, then the lack of battery cooling is really the biggest annoyance. See the other blog posts about the Skoda CitiGo e iV for more
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