10.0
really awful- Crashes / Fires:
- 0 / 0
- Injuries / Deaths:
- 0 / 0
- Average Mileage:
- 0 miles
About These NHTSA Complaints:
The NHTSA is the US gov't agency tasked with vehicle safety. Complaints can be spread across multiple & redundant categories, & are not organized by problem. See the Back button — blue bar at the very top of the page — to explore more.
The emissions modification calibration by Volkswagen causes the coolant to be exposed to elevated temperatures due to higher exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) use to control emissions. These elevated higher temperatures degrade the coolant faster than designed and lead to precipitates falling out of solution in the factory filled G13 coolant. This causes buildup and deposits to form throughout the cooling system, particularly in the heater core which can block proper coolant flow & lead to coolant system failure, specifically of hoses associated with the heater core. When these fail the engine can over heat, and stop which causes loss of steering, propulsion and braking abilities. There is a similar problem on 2012 models with the TDI engine, which has been addressed but the 2015 models are being stranded on the roads creating a safety hazard to the drivers of the vehicles and other motorists on the road.
- Mentor, OH, USA
A defect that meets the definition of a nonconformity in Washington State, and that is covered under warranty, caused the vehicle to stall while driving and caused the vehicle to not accelerate when the accelerator was pressed. My safety was put at risk when this happened on a 50 mph road because vehicles behind me expected my vehicle in front of them to accelerate in a predictable way with the flow of traffic. Another time, a stall happened as I turned onto a highway. I had come to a stop, waited for the traffic light, and then turned right and pressed the accelerator as I normally would to get up to 50 mph. A flashing glow plug light came on, and the car immediately had zero propulsion, and so I turned the steering wheel to roll to the side of the road and turned on my hazard lights. I was fortunate that I was not rear-ended. On another occasion, I came off of the interstate as normal, but when I tried to drive over the overpass at a slight incline, the vehicle was unable to accelerate to 20 mph, and would only go about 5 mph no matter how much the accelerator was pressed. This happened multiple times, but not all of the time, and it was unpredictable when it would happen. It was dangerous to me because I could not time traffic circles with confidence that I would be able to press the accelerator and get up to speed without being struck from the left, or turn out onto busy roads with confidence I wouldn't be t-boned, or merge with traffic on the highway. The mileage on the vehicle at the first attempt to diagnose/repair the defect was 63935 on 10/11/2019 when a VW dealership diagnosed and replaced two glow plugs under warranty. Several more times it was warr. repaired. In November 2021, after the vehicle was repaired and failed on the dealership test drive, an engineer from Volkswagen inspected the vehicle, it was further repaired and released to me. A couple of months later, the vehicle stalled on a highway and a flashing glow plug light came on.
- Tacoma, WA, USA
- Alexandria, VA, USA