NHTSA complaint #11613279

Owner complaint summary

The car stalls and turns off when operating at a slow speed, both in forward or reverse. This is a serious and potentially deadly problem. With my two young children in the car, I was turning left across three lanes of oncoming traffic. When I began to accelerate, my car stalled in the middle of the first lane. I had to figure out what happened, put it in park, restart the car and finish my turn before being hit by oncoming traffic. This has happened 2-3 times each day since this started last week. This has nothing to do with Eco mode or automatic start/stop feature. I am familiar with both of those and disengage them when I start the car. The car has approx 28k miles and is well maintained. It is still well within warranty. The check engine light came on and the code it throws is P0496 for a bad EVAP system. I took it to VW dealer and they re-created and diagnosed the problem. Essentially, the EVAP system has faulty parts and it is causing the gas tank to collapse. The EVAP canister, the purge valve and the gas tank all need to be replaced. The problem is they do not have the parts to replace the gas tank. And they have no idea when they are going to get them. Literally, no time horizon. The VW service advisor admitted that they’ve seen ‘some frequency’ with this problem lately, mainly on 2019-2023 models. It’s a parts issue, not a wear & tear nor maintenance issue. If you look this up online, you’ll see hundreds of posts about this issue with similar scary situations like mine. Couple this with the active recall already in place (passenger airbag may not deploy in an accident) and there’s no solution for that recall, either. My family feels in jeopardy every time we drive our family car. Why is there not a recall for the gas tank collapse? How can we compel VW to produce a remedy in a timely manner? This is going to be a fatal issue for some family. Please help. I am happy to document and share photos/ videos of the situation.