My spouse and I were pretty excited to take home a brand new VW ID.4. Sadly, a few weeks later someone hit it in the parking lot. Our brand new vehicle has been in the shop back at the dealer ever since. We were told that they are now only waiting for left and right replacement light bars. It has been three months. By now we are aware that waiting on car parts has become the norm these days. However, where the story gets a little confounding is the identification of the parts themselves. The technician says the light bars for the vehicle are marked 11K-941-653 (left) and 11K-941-654 (right). As days went by with no sign of these parts ever arriving, we decided to do a little research our own. Needless to say, this part number is definitely hard to find. I found a used one in Poland and my spouse saw a reference to a manufacturer in India. However, the VW parts website refers to left and right light bars as 11A-941-653 (left) and 11A-941-654 (right). Further, when I saw these lights actually existed in the world and were available to order I was elated. I asked the technician if he could give the lights a try. While there wasn’t exactly the excited response I had expected (I imagine they want to get the vehicle out of their shop as much as we want and need to have it back) the technician said that if we wanted to go ahead and purchase the light bars, he would install them and see if they work. So I went ahead and ordered the parts recommended on the VW website – the 11A-941-653 (left) and 11A-941-654 (right) light bars. A week later we dropped them off at our dealer’s service center. Then we waited, and waited. Finally after a bit of prodding, we were told that while the light bars fit perfectly, they don’t actually work. The vehicle’s software won’t recognize them. This is, honestly, where I am left scratching my head. Here we have a brand new 2023 ID.4 AWD Pro S Sport and some brand new 11A-941-653 / 11A-941-654 light bars recommended by the VW website for our 2023 car and clearly available for purchase but the vehicle won’t recognize them? Why? Why does the dealership service center need to hold out for these rare and elusive 11K-941-653 / 11K-941-654 parts? My spouse is rather sure that we are not waiting on the “K” style parts but rather an update to the vehicle’s software that will allow it to recognize the newer and readily available “A” light bars we were actually able to purchase. Meanwhile, we’re heading into four months without our new vehicle and are feeling more than a little dejected: also sad, disillusioned, confused and all around grumbly. If anyone here has any thoughts or insight it would be genuinely appreciated! I will just add that we have been in weekly contact with: our dealership, our insurance agent, a field agent and the company with no insight from anyone involved. We have even gone so far as to hint at litigation due to our frustration - to no avail. Essentially, it has been radio silence on this particular question.
Instead of just “hinting” at litigation, hire an attorney now to make the dealers life unpleasant.
It is likely various generations of VW parts are identified by the alphabetic letters. You THINK part A is newer when in fact it is likely an OLDER version (A comes before K) and clearly not supported by the car.
If you were on a VW parts web seller, the sites always ask for the VIN to confirm this is the correct part for your car. Did you put in the VIN to confirm the “A” parts would work?
You bought parts hoping they would work in your car. The mechanic was waiting for the parts that were guaranteed to work in your car. The “K” parts may be backward compatible with the “A” parts, the reverse is clearly not true.
You tried, you failed. Part numbers are there for a reason. Not a lawyer in your state but I don’t think you have a suit against the dealer. After all, they can’t MAKE the parts themselves. Sorry about your situation.
Seems like a lot of electrical issues these days with vw. I guess possibly the lemon law might cover if a car cannot be repaired. I’d look into that and get the car bought back from vw.
The car doesn’t have electrical issues, it was in an accident and needs the lights replaced. The lights aren’t in stock…sooo it sits. Not a Lemon Law issue, as far as I know.
If a new car cannot be repaired by the dealer after a certain number of attempts and a certain passage of time, they can be forced to buy the car back. It seems like unavailability of parts might make it fit under the lemon law, depending on the state. Seems to me it would be no different than if the car needed a new computer or other component and the dealer couldn’t deliver. Just imho but better than sourcing your own parts or getting a software change.
The repair was not caused by a faulty car, it was caused by an accident. Not VW’s fault it happened. VW’s fault there are no spare parts but that isn’t a lemon law problem.
I’m not sure it matters whose fault it is. If the car cannot be repaired due to parts supply, it is a vw problem.
@Vela880 as you are learning,
11A-941-653 does not equal 11K-941-653
and
11A-941-654 does not equal 11K-941-654
similar part numbers, but something is different enough to make VW come up with a new part number (it’s feasible that they even came up with 10 different part numbers: B thru K.) Now, I can’t say what the difference is, but something is different.
Sorry to hear of your struggles with this car. Waiting on parts can be very frustrating.
It matters
Sorry you are having this difficulty. Not an uncommon thing reported here, Covid supply chain issues continue, not just VW, many makes/models. The parts you found yourself apparently are not the correct parts for your particular car. In days of yore lights were just ordinary light bulbs, only requiring battery power and ground and they’d work. Not so much these days. Lights now are often LED’s, which require lower voltages to operate. There’s an electronics circuit in between the battery and the light fixture that needs to be programmed by the car’s computer, and the car’s computer apparently doesn’t know how to program the fixtures you purchased.
So what to do? hmmm …
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You could return the fixtures for a refund, and wait until the proper VW ordered fixtures arrive.
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You could drive the car without the fixtures, but that might be both unsafe & illegal.
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You could phone the vendor who sold you the fixtures, maybe they know of a work-a-round.
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An auto-electric shop might be able to make a bespoke circuit to power the currently non-working lights using a separate switch. This may be unsafe & illegal too.
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Let the shop keep your car and rent another in the meantime.
No harm asking though.
I expect you already know, but if your car was a more common variety, Corolla, Civic, Mazda 3, etc you’d be less likely to have this sort of problem, economy of scale would be on your side.
Not sure what site you used, but all the ones I checked say the 11A DOES NOT FIT the 2023
The parts catalog shows P/N 11A-941-653 fits 2021 model year.
2023 model year P/N 11A-941-653-A (note the suffix “A”).
11K-941-653 appears to be the stamp number or mold number on the original part.
Online catalogs are for reference, actual part numbers must be verified with a VIN on the parts department parts catalog.
The Toyota equivalent is the bZ4X, those vehicles had a “Do Not Drive” recall order for 5 months last year.
In Minnesota the lemon law only covers warranty repairs. Since this is not a warranty item, it would not cover. Nothing to do with how the problem developed. Other states may be different.
Maybe this is a major part but having a car held at a body shop indefinitely does not make a lot of sense. Usually the shop waits unti parts come in before scheduling the repair. Parking lot damage made the car unsafe to drive?
Like most other states.
I don’t think the supply shortage is caused by the sniffles, Volkswagen and several other auto manufactures have electrical parts suppliers located in Ukraine.
Thanks everyone for your replies. Insightful. Btw we did purchase the 11A-941-653-A / 11A-941-654-A parts (A at the end) which the parts.vw.com site claims fits the
2023 Volkswagen ID.4 -L - cylinder EV AWD Pro S Sport Utility
+1
Both Warranties and Lemon Law claims have a disclaimer for damage from accidents or from owner negligence. While the OP is suffering from VW’s “parts problem”, this collision-caused situation is exempt from both warranty protection and Lemon Law protection. VW is–literally–a 3rd Party in this case.
As I said above. The issue is it is a new model and parts for new models are reserved mainly for the assembly line. It is often hard to get unique parts for new models, particularly body parts.