All generations and engines together · 6,275 MOT tests in the 2025 data
One of the best small SUVs per mile driven. Watch suspension and brakes. A solid used buy, provided its MOT history has no repeating suspension advisories.
Owner folklore from forums and the motoring press, with how well each report stands up. Most of it never shows up in an MOT, which is why this section exists at all.
The ID.4's flush, touch-sensitive door handles use a sealed switch and control unit, and water getting past the seal can make a handle stop responding or, in rare cases, let a door release while the car is moving. VW UK issued a safety recall (R/2025/516, November 2025) covering just under 23,000 UK-registered ID.4s built between June 2023 and September 2025, and the same handle design caused a production stop-sale while parts were sorted out. The fix is a free dealer software update that makes a fault show up as a warning rather than failing silently, so check it's been done.
The small 12V battery runs the locks, contactors and infotainment while the car sits, and owners report it going flat even with the main traction battery fully charged, which leaves the car completely dead and unable to boot up until it's jump-started or replaced. It's turned up repeatedly on owner forums on both sides of the Atlantic, at all sorts of ages rather than one obvious point in ownership. The battery itself isn't a big-ticket item, roughly £150-£350 fitted, but repeat failures mean repeat dealer visits, and none of it shows up on an MOT.
Early cars are reported to have a laggy, sometimes confusing infotainment system, with the screen freezing, rebooting on its own, or taking a while to wake up when you get in. VW's later software (the 3.x update rolled out from 2023) is widely said to be a real step up, so a 2021-2022 car that's never had a software update is the one most likely to still misbehave. It's a nuisance rather than something that leaves you stranded, and the fix is free, but repeated freezing on a test drive suggests a car that hasn't been kept current.
A recurring forum complaint: front struts described as leaking or 'blowing' a seal, plus clunks and rattles from the rear suspension over bumps and potholes. It's been raised independently on several separate UK and US owner forums, at a spread of mileages rather than one clear failure point. The measured MOT data for this model backs it up too, with suspension standing out as the top fault category, so the knocks and creaks owners describe line up with what's actually failing on the test lane, not just forum chatter.
A minority of owners report the car briefly losing drive or refusing to pull away, which write-ups have traced to the battery management or motor control software rather than a mechanical fault, and which VW has addressed with software updates in some markets. It doesn't happen to most cars and there's no clear pattern by age or mileage, but it's been reported often enough across owner and press sources to flag. In warranty, it's a free software fix; out of warranty, a genuine drive unit or battery control module fault would run to four figures.
Ranked from this model’s own MOT record, then from what owners report.
Saveable checklistThe physical checks its own defect data says are worth your time, most telling first.
These judge the seller’s upkeep rather than the model, and they are where the haggling money is.
Drawn from the reports above rather than the MOT data. These are the model-specific ones.
Computed from DVSA MOT results, all of Great Britain, 2025. Nothing here is opinion.
Share of tests where each item was recorded. The dark tick is the class average across all tracked models; bars are scaled within each group.
The rows that judge the model rather than its keeper. 6,275 tests in this band.
Tyres, pads and stone chips say more about how the car was driven and maintained than about how it was built.
Same segment (Small SUVs), best MOT record first. Compare before you shortlist.