- VW buried routine maintenance items under several panels in the front of the ID. Buzz.
- Changing the cabin filter requires removing the hood and surrounding upper parts.
- Maintenance access is possible but time-consuming, pushing owners toward dealers.
Electric vehicles didn’t just change how cars move; they reshaped how they’re built. Without the need to accommodate a bulky engine and transmission, designers gained a new level of freedom. Batteries and motors can be positioned wherever they best serve the car’s layout, efficiency, or style.
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Somehow, the engineers at Volkswagen decided that they’d leverage that freedom to put the cabin filter where you can only get to it by removing the hood.
More: ‘Still Squeaking After 50 Days In Tesla Service’ Says Frustrated Cybertruck Owner
That’s right, changing out the cabin filter, a routine maintenance item, requires taking off an entire body panel. In fact, it requires removing more than just the hood because adjacent panels on each side of the hood also have to come off. On top of that, the area hiding the cabin filter also contains another vital maintenance component. We’re getting a little ahead of ourselves, though.
Not Where You’d Expect It
Typically, cabin filters are hidden behind the passenger side glove box. Simply opening the glove box, emptying it, and then squeezing it to allow it to lower is enough to gain access to the filter. In several cars, it takes less than a minute to get to the filter and around the same amount of time to change it. That’s why the spot where VW placed it in the ID. Buzz is so surprising.
Doing the job requires several steps. One must open the front panel, then unbolt two upper body panels on each side of the upper hood. Once those are off, the hood itself can come off, but only after disconnecting its electrical connections and windshield wiper sprayers. Once that’s done, the filter itself sits buried in the area between the body panel and the firewall.
While this is technically something that anyone can do without specialized tools or skills, it’s not exactly simple. That would probably be less of a big deal if the only thing under the panel was the cabin filter. After all, it’s a relatively rare maintenance item.
It’s Not Just the Filter
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Sadly, Volkswagen also put other important bits like the brake fluid reservoir under there. That’s right, just to check your brake fluid level, you’ll need to go through all of this, too.
In other words, lots of folks are going to pay dealers to do this when it likely should’ve been simpler. As Jalopnik, who spotted this issue first, pointed out, “the ID Buzz is already expensive enough.” Perhaps it determined that customers willing to pay a premium would be happy to let the dealer maintain it. That’s just one more reason that it’s a far departure from the original.
Photos Katarina Brattli / YouTube
#Hid #Filter #Youll #Dismantle #Front
