Volkswagen owners targeted by thieves who have stolen cruise control sensors from cars across London are furious after discovering the car’s “poor design” that makes them so easy to steal is set to cost them £1,600 ($2000) each.
Does anyone here know if this affects USA versions?
It appears many makes/models use a similar sensor. Wondering if in fact on most make/models these sensors are just as easy to access as VW? Maybe just comes with modern cars, and VW’s issue in the UK is just a tempest in a teapot?
Probably wouldn’t take much to make them theft resistant with rivets or one way screws etc, but jolly ole England is not what it used to be so expect more. Then again, do you really need adaptive cruise control?
When my daughter bought her 2017 Corolla, the ONLY thing she cared about was power windows and a little more power, she learned how to drive (including snow) without ABS and TPMS etc etc, her 2002 was a base model (CE) and my 2006 was a LE with power windows door locks and CC, she just cared about the power windows, but I really like having CC, lost that when the 06 was rear ended and totaled, well we drive the 17 and she loved it, much faster lol… She never has even used the CC (in 4 years) but when I have stolen it from her to drive it (lol), I noticed that the car would slow down when I started to get close to another vehicle, and once I realized what was happened I instantly became a fan of adaptive cruise control… So No you don’t need it, but it sure is nice to use if you do have it, but again she doesn’t even use CC, even when she round tripped Nashville to DC… She does like the blue tooth infotainment center as do I, and the automatic dimming lights, which she had for 1.5 years before she realized it, she was always faster at dimming the lights, but started to notice them dimming in a curve on street signs…
One day we might read the owners manual to find out what all this little econo has to offer, but until then Surprise!!!
New philosophy, buy a new vehicle, don’t read up on it and it will be like the gift that keeps giving as you find out more and more things it can do…
You might want to look in the manual to see if the distance from the vehicle ahead of you can be set . Ours is set for 4 car length. It can be less but that is what I want.
I didn’t know I had a lumbar support either until about three years. Started pushing buttons and wondering what that was sticking me in the back deflated it.
Whatever they call it, discovered the tilt and telescoptic steering wheel. Best to not adjust while driving. But on a long trip you start asking what’s this lever for?
Bah! I have never used cruise control on any vehicle, and I prefer buying basic models which don’t even have this feature. In fact, none of my vehicles right now even have cruise control.
The picture in the story shows a car with the grill emblem missing, adhesive separation can be seen. The large center emblem on late model vehicles is a sort of a “lens” and shield for the radar sensor, damage to the emblem car cause radar sensor calibration faults.
The radar sensor, like most other vehicles is located behind the grill:
Only report so far are coming from Europe or the UK but it could happen here eventually. Porsche has had problems in the past with thieves taking the headlights from 911’s and other models but changed the design to make them harder to steal. More recently someone butchered a Taycan to get at the lights.
+1
I didn’t really give this feature much thought until I finally used Cruise Control, a few months after buying my current car. The safety and convenience advantages of Adaptive Cruise Control are very impressive, IMHO.
I perused my car’s “menu” recently, and I discovered the same thing. It was pre-set for a long following distance, and I opted to keep it on that setting.
Our 2019 Odyssey and 2023 Model 3 have a lot of adjustments that are only settable when the car is in park. Just a few minutes ago I returned from a cupcake run in the Odyssey. I noticed that the driver’s seat wasn’t properly adjusted for me and I had to stop and put it in park to adjust it with the preset button.
Just curious, if yours got stolen & it cost you $2000 for the replacement part plus say $1000 labor to fix it, would you pay the $3000+ or would just keep the car as is, configured without ACC?
Of course then rates may go up or policies canceled. Got my State Farm policy statement. No rate change but they did say they had an operating loss. Invitation to their annual meeting but I’ll pass.
Heh heh, my agent called me a while back. I said I can’t talk, I’m driving through the mountains in the rain and don’t want to have an accident,
There’s a big difference between driving an older car which never had this type of feature, and driving a newer car which is designed to have this feature, but it has been damaged.
A 20+ year old economy car will steer, drive, and stop as expected, and does not require radar sensors to function. In fact, it probably won’t even have cruise control, nor ABS, nor any “driver assistance” features.
A newer car which is designed to have this feature will likely have a lot of error codes and warning lights illuminated if the system is damaged, and even the normal braking, steering, and driving will not work well without it.
So no, this is not like a worn-out A/C compressor on an old high-mileage car, which most people would just ignore and roll down the windows. This is something that you (or your insurance company) will have to pony up and fix.
