Seymansey

The aircon is cold and crisp in my 2021 Karoq, seen lots of complaints about the aircon in Karoqs, but not in mine. Far more efficient than the old system in my 2006 mercedes (which was recently serviced with gas and a new condenser)

It’s an SEL 1.5 and it is of course perfectly adequate at motorway speeds with your family in it, but you have to appreciate that I’ve previously had nearly 20 years of low slung coupes and fast estates with sports suspension Apples and oranges.

I had the software update notification this weekend. Very clunky way for it to notify you when you’re driving, then you press OK and it says “function not available when driving”. Anyway, pulled over, hit update and I’m at 0302 and 22.1 maps. Not that I use the built in nav much as it’s largely useless when compared to Apple Maps / Google / Waze. Although I will cut it some slack, it did helpfully point out a curry house i keep meaning to visit on my way home last week!

189cm in my SEL and I did two four hour stints this week and it was fine. Adaptive cruise makes things easier and more comfortable.

I wouldn’t want to vmax a Karoq, it feels spongy and wobbly at UK Motorway speeds!

I don't think the Karoq has the launch control capability.

My DQ200 1.5 is pretty good and predictable, but the one thing which drives me nuts is the unresponsive squid pedal I get when slowing on approach to roundabouts, then accelerating again when my way is clear. Car doesn't have a clue what to do and on more than one occasion now I've effectively drifted onto the roundabout and needed to mash the accelerator far more than I thought was required. Knocking the shifter into S tends to help a bit as the car clings onto the gear.

It falls into the category of not much reward for a lot of effort.

Lots, my social circle are a mix of teslas, Hyundais, Kias and an EQC. I’ve had a ride or go in them all. Personally, there’s a lot of great engines I’ve yet to own, and I fully intend on doing that.

spot the kid.

Thanks for the replies - I will likely just book it in for its one year birthday, service it yearly and have the interval changed. I've serviced my other cars myself, all to the manufacturer's specs and deadlines (mainly Mercedes) and often ahead of schedule. I used to have the luxury of a fuel card that I could charge oil to, so doing 3 oil and filter changes wasn't really an issue for me. With an extractor pump, I could be done and dusted for another 10k in 30 mins. It was changing out worn suspension components that was the miserable job in the cold! Car is PCPed at the moment, but right now the car purchase price overall is quite a bit lower than car prices are now. The ballon at the end of the agreement is about 50% of what it would cost me to replace a same spec Karoq with similar age and mileage. This will be kept for 10 years before we heave-ho to electric. (Well, the wife can, you can pry your soulless milkfloats out of my cold dead petrol infused hands).

Had my 1.5 SEL since December, and it's a great family car. We seem to be on track to be doing around 10-12k a year in it. However, it seems that the car is set to variable servicing - 672 days / 170000 miles before its first oil change. That seems a long time away - I've always worked on the basis that oil was changed every 10000 miles. Certainly when i was doing 30-40k a year in my Mercedes, the oil would be coming out like black tap water after 10k. Now the car is only doing short miles every day, seems like the oil will be worked harder. I'm sure i've read on there that service intervals should have been a part of the handover, but that wasn't the case for me.

A few observations about using ACC on my Karoq: Adaptive cruise in Eco mode on the motorway seems downright dangerous. Last week I used ACC to deal with slow moving traffic on the the motorway. When the congestion cleared, everyone around me accelerated normally backup to 70 from about 40 and the Karoq started to resume accelerating to 70 at a dying snails pace. I had to knock it out of Eco to get the car behaving normally. I probably won't ever bother with Eco mode ever again. I've driven hundreds of thousands of miles over 25 years or so, mainly on the motorway and I've always tried to maintain a fluid driving style when on the motorway, and staying out of 'clusters' of cars travelling together. What I've noticed with ACC (and this is likely general, not a slur on the VAG ACC) that it causes you to be at the mercy of other poor drivers and middle lane hoggers. So someone else's 70 is actually 64mph in reality, so you end up disabling acc and moving around them. Plus you tend to be in convoy in a cluster much more often, which I am not particularly comfortable with. If someone pulls into your maintained gap and are travelling much slower, the car brakes a bit more sharpish than I would have and you are also hoping that the person who is hanging off your bumper behind notices when you automatically slow down. On the plus side, ACC saved our skin when the car had only done 17 miles - there was a 5 car pile up in front of us on the M5 due to low sun and people driving too closely together. The car picked up the rapid decrease in distance to the car in front and slowed us a good second quicker than I probably would have, even with the highest gap setting on the ACC.

In the end, I bought a 13cm USB C to lightning cable off amazon (https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08NJVXYVN/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) I also bought a short USB C right angle extension cable. The goal was for me not to need to stuff a long cable up into the cubby hole, I just wanted to plug in the phone and go. It works well, it doesn't catch the lid anymore. This is all for my MIB 3 system BTW.

Thanks - I've ordered a 90 degree extension lead and a stubby charge cable to see if this works.