Car Buying Notes

As promised, a second Car Buying post for the week. I’ve had to revamp this one several times, because my brain has been overloaded with info the past few days, and I’ve struggled to turn it into a coherent piece. Today’s mostly revolves around Ze Germans.

Why I Am Ditching Audi

I think I addressed this a bit in my first post, more about why I’m stepping down from my Audi in terms of finances. But I know the question is out there that goes along the lines of, “Your Audi was your favorite car ever. Why not just buy it when your lease ends and stick with it for a few more years?”

A very good question. One I considered for a bit.

There are a few answers.

The first regards short term expenses. Beyond just buying the car and paying the associated taxes, the next ownership year would be an expensive one. The Q5 needs new tires. We just spent $300 to put a new tire on S’s Telluride. Multiply times four and I’m dropping $1200-ish on top of the purchase price.

Then the next scheduled maintenance for the Audi is a beast, with a whole swath of “required” tasks hitting at the 40,000 mile mark. I was quoted $1500 by the dealer, and that’s before any unexpected repairs or replacement parts. I would likely take it to an independent shop to reduce the cost a bit, but I don’t think that would knock more than a couple hundred bucks off the price.

Audis, like most German cars, aren’t known for aging affordably, either. Looking at cost of ownership curves online, once you get five years into ownership, you can count on dropping at least a grand each year on service and repairs.

Between tires, maintenance, taxes, and the lease buyout, I was in the ballpark of what it would cost to get into a new, non-electric car. It always seems smarter to start over rather than stick with a car with miles and wear-and-tear on it for the same price.

Then the EV market got flooded with incentives and they became an option, which totally changed my thinking on what my new car would be.

The second reason for not staying with the Audi is the normal annoyances that come with driving something every day for three years.

I’ve had the tailgate fixed three times. Do I trust it to keep working normally after it is out of warranty? Not really. I’m shocked it hasn’t glitched out again since its last repair.

My biggest issue with the car has been the transmission and the Auto Start/Stop function. The transmission is sluggish in low gears. When I’m backing out of the garage and changing directions, for example, it often seems bubbly and hesitant. It reminds me of cruising at idle speed in a boat and that weird, wet, gurgling sound I would hear when I first started our boat and backed it out of the dock. If you ever need to punch it to go from low speeds to high quickly, the car is hesitant as hell. The engine revs, trying to supply the asked for power, but the transmission just can’t move it to the axles fast enough.

The Auto Start/Stop is terrible on Audis. It will get you killed if you’re not careful. There have been so many times in the past three years when I was coasting into a roundabout or yield sign, the car decided to shut off the engine, then I needed power and it refused to reengage immediately. Your heart rate will crank up a few notches when you see a car coming right at you as you mash the gas pedal and nothing happens for a few seconds, then the engine reluctantly kicks in and gives you just enough power to avoid being smashed.

Contrast that with S’s old Jeep Grand Cherokee or current Telluride, where the engine supplies full power quickly.

Or compare to an EV, where the power is never truly cut and the car responds instantly.

Even if you turn Auto Start/Stop off – which must be done each time you re-start the car – the Audi struggles in those quick stop-and-go situations.

I’m all for saving gas and cutting emissions, but not at the expense of safety.

I’ve also found Audi’s drive-assist functions to be annoying. Adaptive Cruise Control is far too conservative. Lane assist is too aggressive. For 2021, Audi had a pretty good package of “self driving” functions. I was never confident enough to use them all at the same time.

Obviously these are super first world problems. I’m lucky to have an Audi in the first place, let alone be in a position to either keep it or replace it with something that might be less expensive but is still very nice. I’m sharing all this more to explain my car shopping than as true complaints.[1]

VW ID.4

I’ve written about the Volkswagen ID.4 a little already.

Kyle Conner, the main guy behind the Out Of Spec videos, is the biggest EV geek I’ve come across in my research. He owns and drives high end EVs on a daily basis. His videos are often about squeezing as much performance out of an EV as possible.

Where other reviewers are lukewarm about the ID.4, he absolutely loves them. He agrees they are quirky, not as exciting or technologically advanced as competitors, and have a few things that will drive you crazy. But, he counters, they perform just fine as a daily driver.

Last week I wondered how important it was to have a car that can leverage the Tesla charging network when I rarely take long trips, and when I do they are almost always to big cities with mature charging networks. And do I need 400 horsepower when that is mostly a party trick to use momentarily? The instant power of any EV will allow me to easily floor it to pass, merge, or momentarily avoid trouble.

Suddenly I was looking at ID.4s again. And there were still some great deals.

So I went and test drove one Monday.

I think Kyle’s assessment was perfect: it is indeed quirky, but it also a completely competent and enjoyable ride. The screen graphics seem 20 years old compared to a Tesla. There are some wild controls scattered through the cabin. The infotainment system is frustrating. The steering wheel buttons are easy to accidentally hit and, for example, turn on the steering wheel heater when you are making a right turn. It lacks some key functions that leverage the promise of electric motors.

It rides nicer than the Tesla Model Y, though. It has Apple CarPlay, supports SiriusXM, and has HomeLink integration. It manages an estimated 275 miles on a full charge, enough to get to Cincinnati and back without charging in ideal conditions. It comes with three years of free charging on the troublesome Electrify America network. For all of EA’s issues, the cities I will visit most often – Cincy and Louisville – feature EA chargers at the same locations as Tesla Superchargers, and these are often the best maintained and functioning EA spots.

For getting around town, which is 80% of my driving, it does the job just fine. With all the current incentives it comes in cheaper than the Tesla Model Y. Plus, VW Finance would waive my Audi turn-in fee since VW owns Audi, saving us another $500.

I got quotes from our insurance agent Tuesday. A Tesla Model Y would increase our premium by $400 a year. An ID.4 would decrease it by the same amount. So the ID.4 saves us almost a grand right there before you even get to sticker price, lease amount, and so on. Throw in the forgiven disposition fee and that’s nearly $1500 in savings.

Would it make more sense to go ahead and get a 2023 ID.4, despite their flaws and the fixes expected on the soon-to-arrive 2024 models, as the dealers try to push them off the lot?

For about 24 hours I thought the answer to that question was yes.

The big catch is I would have to buy one right now. With two payments still owed to Audi. There was only one on the lot that I liked, a gorgeous Silver Mist Pro S rear wheel drive with Cosmic interior, and I can’t imagine it will sit there for six more weeks.

The more I thought about it, though, the more it made sense to sit tight. Tesla prices are fluctuating again. They just went up, but many expect them to take another drop soon. For a couple grand less, the ID.4 makes sense. If they are priced equally, I think you have to go with Tesla. Once the updated 2024 VWs land, the trim level I would want will check in about $4000 higher than the Model Y. The software in current VWs is being eliminated and replaced with a new Android Auto system, likely in the 2025 models. Even on a lease, not sure how comfortable I am buying a car running software that is no longer in development.

VW showed off the 2024 models a couple weeks ago, but there is zero guidance on when those will show up. If you go to VW’s website, it still allows you to spec a 2023 model then points you to existing inventory. There isn’t even a Coming Soon page showing the improvements in the ‘24s. The VW sales guy I met with – who was a very tall, very German guy, which seemed perfect – said they haven’t been told when to expect the new ones or when orders will open up.

I spent pretty much all of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday making lists, watching videos, reading reviews and message boards, and generally making myself crazy trying to figure out what the best path forward was.

Tesla Questions

My re-interest in the ID.4 was prompted not just from reevaluating what my driving needs are, but also because I have one serious concern about Tesla.

As I’ve mentioned before, Tesla has dropped radar/ultrasonic sensors, relying solely on cameras and “neural network” processing to control all the driver assist functions. This can cause phantom braking, when the camera thinks it sees something and slams on the brakes for no reason, among other issues.

That seems like a huge flaw to me. While I won’t be on the highway a ton, if I can’t trust the adaptive cruise control and, thus, can’t use it, the Teslas take a big step back. Tesla is constantly tweaking its software in attempts to make improvements. I’m not sure that a bunch of new code will ever replace sensors shooting energy out and making calculations based on the returns.

Then I read five bad things about the ID.4 and it seems dumb not to go with Tesla, even with their issues.

I’m glad spring break is coming up so I can stop thinking about cars for a few days.

Electrical

We had an electrician out Wednesday to run the line for a garage charger.

I don’t think I shared how crazy the process was to find someone to even give me a quote. I sent messages to seven or eight different services, and only got responses from two. The first company sent a guy out and gave me an estimate on the high end of what I expected based on my research. The second had me send them pictures of our electrical box, basement, and garage plus a video of where the line would run. They quoted me about 30% less. I went with the second folks. They were also on the official Tesla Approved list of businesses, so hopefully that means I can trust them.

The bummer of the project was that our garage wall is on the far north side of our house while our electrical box is in the basement on the far south side. That required running about 75 feet of wire. If our box had been directly below our garage, or even in the garage in an older home, we would have saved another 50%.