How To Preheat Your Volkswagen EV & The "Camping Mode" Hack

We dive into the "Auxiliary Climate" settings, including how to preheat your car from the app and a clever workaround to keep the cabin warm overnight since these cars don't have a dedicated "Camp Mode" yet.

In this episode:

Preheating 101: How to use the mobile app to warm up your cabin, steering wheel, and seats before you even step outside.

The "Camping Mode" Hack: Using the "Departure Time" feature to automatically heat the car at specific times (like 3 AM or 6 AM) so you don't wake up freezing.

Battery Concerns: Real-world testing shows preheating only uses ~3-5% of the battery even in cold weather.

Automatic Defogging: How to set your car to automatically clear the windshield for those foggy morning starts.

Next Up: We discuss Dilip's 9-month ownership experience and road trips to Canada!

Check out the  VWIDTalk Podcast on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts ( Apple Podcasts,  Spotify, Overdrive and more).

A transcript, cleaned up by AI and edited by a staffer, is below.

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Transcript:

I’ve had an awesome nine months with the car. I’m learning its features every day, and today I’m going to learn a bit more. What we’re looking at now is how the car is parked next to the house and plugged in overnight. That’s the wall box he uses while the car is sleeping, so it charges overnight.

What we want to focus on today is how to set up different options to pre-warm the car. We’re now sitting with Dilip in the car, and there’s a great way to preheat it from anywhere. For example, if you’re inside somewhere, skiing, and you have good cell coverage, you can do this through the mobile app.

In the app, you go to Climate. Inside Climate, there are a couple of settings. If you go into Settings, you can select the temperature. Since it’s winter, you’ll probably want it warmer. Once you set the temperature, you hit Save. Now the car remembers that temperature.

When you want to actually turn on the heating or air conditioning, you just press the On button. From the main app, you go to Climate, then tap On. The app sends the request to the car, and that’s an easy method that works every time. If you’re leaving a restaurant, a movie theater, or finishing a day of skiing, this is a perfect way to proactively turn it on. Depending on how cold the car is, it can take 15 to 20 minutes to warm up.

Because this is an EV, it also has stationary air conditioning, which is what you’re triggering through the app. If we go back to the icons here, you’ll see Auxiliary Climate. You can see the temperature setting displayed, which matches what you selected on the phone. These two systems are connected, which is pretty cool.

Even if you forget to preheat the car manually, there’s another option. As soon as you approach the car, it recognizes you via the key fob and automatically turns on the climate control, either heating or cooling, based on the settings.

As for battery drain, it depends on how cold it is. The heater can draw up to six kilowatts. In the worst case, it might use around three kilowatt-hours if the car is extremely cold, which is roughly four to five percent of the battery.

There’s another feature I really like. If you’re preheating the car, you probably also want the seats warm. You can choose which seats to heat, including the steering wheel. For example, you can preheat the driver’s seat with the steering wheel and the passenger seat as well. Once you set this, the car remembers it until you change it, such as when summer arrives.

I had a question about a setting I hadn’t seen before: automatic window defogger. When we’ve gone camping—mostly in spring—I’ve woken up to foggy windows, even with WeatherTech mats. This setting can help, but in that case, I’d recommend selecting Max AC when you’re inside the car.

Here’s where it gets a little odd. If you trigger the climate remotely while outside the car, it follows the auxiliary climate settings. That’s what the app controls. But when you’re inside the car and driving, it follows the main climate system. So there’s a bit of a split between how the two systems behave.

If you want the car to defog automatically in the morning, there’s a very useful solution: departure times. You can set a departure time—say, 8:00 a.m. on Sunday—and the car will automatically start heating and defogging before that time. Even if you’re still sleeping, it will run without unlocking the doors.

Some people use this feature because the car doesn’t have a dedicated camping mode. You can set multiple departure times so the cabin heats up automatically. For example, if you wake up cold at 3:00 a.m., you can schedule it to run then. You’re limited to two departure times, but having two is still better than none.

Once activated, the system runs for about half an hour before shutting off automatically.

To summarize, we covered how to turn heating or cooling on through the app, how to use and preset auxiliary climate settings, and how to set departure times. If you leave at the same time every day, like 7:00 a.m., you can set it to repeat daily.

Thanks so much for letting us show how to preheat the ID. Buzz, ID.4, ID.5, and ID.7—it’s the same process across all of them. Catch us next time when we talk about your experiences over the past nine months, including multiple road trips to Oregon, Northern California, and Canada.

Thank you.