I recently acquired a '23 ID.4 and during my search for my purchase I looked at several car options (Hyundai Ioniq 5 and others). I am a little confused about pre-conditioning. The pre-conditioning I am concerned with is warming the HV battery for optimum charging and efficiency. Not warming or cooling the interior cabin. It seems that the term "Pre-conditioning" is used interchangeably. The Ioniq 5 has some type of pre-conditioning that warms the battery prior to arriving at a public charger. Is that an option for the ID.4? Is there a way to precondition (warm up) the HV battery for optimum charging at DC chargers and/or preconditioning (warm up) the HV battery for optimum driving range? Thanks, Tim US, on the Wisconsin/Michigan border
That being said, there definitely is a battery warmer in the car, and as soon as you plug into a DC fast charger, the battery warmer comes on. Depending on the starting temperature, within 10 minutes or so, the battery will be at optimum temperature. Chris (Battery Life) recently got an ID.7 in Germany. It has true preconditioning. Both a button you can press on the screen to turn on the heater, and in addition if you are navigating to a DC fast charger, it will automatically warm the battery. The ID.7 has software version 4 - my recollection is that the 2024 models will have this same version, but none have been delivered to customers as of yet. VW has made no promise to deliver software version 4 to older cars, and in fact they have even said that version 4 is not compatible with older cars. There may be OTA updates (they may have finally gotten past the logjam that blocked them before), but they have made no promises regarding what will be in those updates. It could just be minor bugfixes for all I know.
