Straight from the beginning I have brought my car to an independent expert. That is the reason, why I have so many data at all. The many indications didn’t convince him, to position against the Kraftfahrtbundesamt and their approval of the car. Then this would mean to impeach the credibility of the event data recorder.
He adviced me to contact the department of accident research of the car manufacturer. Indeed the car manufacturer takes this topic so serious that he implemented an own departmen for it. After the first contact I got the information:
- to bring my car to a service partner of the manufacturer
- to declare it there as an security relevant customer request
Indeed the car was handled differently then. The manual of the car has an own chapter about the possibilities to read out informations of the car:
This leads to a certain amount of trust and transparency, when you know that these variety of assistants are tracked and you can get these data.
non permanent databuffer
The form for the approval of my personal data had additionally the information, that there is a ring buffer with 6 entries. This means the data from the car is written into 6 buffers and when the 7nd comes in the first one, the oldest, gets overwritten. I hoped to find some answers in these kind of data.
But my hope was gone when I found out, what the workshop did to my non permanet data. They drove arround with the car for 15 km (!!!) for a testdrive. This might lead to an overwrite of the data.
About these ring buffer I had an intense exchange with my customer consultant. She was inadequate cheerfull when she called me and denied the existence of these ringbuffer. At that point in time I had already signed the above mentioned documents. Her own ignorance was even documented by her. She wrote a protocol about the discussion with me:
“customer claims there is a ringbuffer, which could be read out”
“customer says the car wasn’t allowed to be moved to not overwrite these changes”
Then she talked to the technician: “The things about the ringbuffer are true, but anyway there is enough permanent data.”
abbreviation: FA department, SV issue, Ah dealership, VWP’s manufacturer’s partner, SB person responsible
My impression was, that there was a lack of knowledge. And the technicians who had the right knowledge were not allowed to talk to me. Here the processes show room for improvement, so that the customers don’t need to explain the product to the customer consultant. Even that both, the customer consultant and the technician, agree on that it is no problem to overwrite data, does not convince me.
There is also some information in this document, that my brake pedal was at 3%, which means the manufacturer has way more informations then he gave to me.
Anyway I was curious about what they might find out there. Indeed the interventions of the front assist were read out. In the chapter about the front assist I have uploaded the content. But I am not aware of any further investigations on my car. The garage never told me what they did on their drive or handed me protocolls about their tests and their use cases.
After I made the car 5 months available for accident research, the head of the department of accident research answered me, that he can not tell me something about my car, because the car was never investigated by his department.
The manufacturer sticks to this official statement:
the footmat were on their place and I have pressed the gas pedal to full throttle. As customer you are completely dependent of the manufacturer.
In sum I wrote 8 mails full of questions to the department of accident research and the customer care. To some points they gave an answer. But I am not sure if anybody ever did a research n the code of the application software of the car according to my statement or checked the testcases which includes situations with intersections or parking situations. Or if at least a jira ticket was opened at the side of the software supplier.