NHTSA complaint #11674313

Owner complaint summary

The incident occurred on May 24, 2025, while preparing to park the 2023 VW ID4. I had two occupants in the car with me. At the time of the incident, I was moving very slow with my foot on the brake, just about ready to stop and put the car in the park position, when the ID4 suddenly violently lurched forward. The car went over a cement parking stop continuing forward on to a sidewalk and then hit a building. I tried to stop the vehicle as quickly as I could. No collision lights, none of the usual sensors, and no automatic Collison braking came on. The only braking was by me. If someone would have been walking in front of the car at the time of the incident there would have been serious injuries, or deaths. Had the car had more room to accelerate before it hit the building, I think myself & my passengers could have been injured. The vehicle was taken into VW dealership who had the car for five weeks. The car was inspected by a VW engineer, final report states driver pressed the accelerator causing the vehicle to go forward at 54% acceleration. I expressed to the VW dealership that the car DID lunge but that I did not touch the accelerator. I had 2 passengers that can also verify that there were no warning lamps, sensors, or symptoms prior to the incident and normally the front sensors start beeping when you get too close to anything! After this incident I started to do some research and found on a VW Vortex forum that this type of incident has happened to numerous owners of ID 4's. Some of the writers to the forum had the exact same incident as mine, stating they were pulling into a parking spot ready to park and the car lunged. I also found it was happening to Audi owners a sister company of VW. My greatest concern is the frequency of this incident and the company's refusal to take any responsibility which was also widely reported on line. We had owned the VW ID4 for 2.5 years and never had anything like this happened before.