VW did not want to track vehicle with kidnapped child until owner had renewed GPS subscription

It all started with a robbery in Illinois. A man attacked a 34-year-old pregnant woman, stole her Volkswagen with the woman’s two-year-old son in a child seat in the back seat, and ran over the woman as she fled.

Although the woman was seriously injured, she managed to call 911. Not knowing in which direction the man fled, officers contacted Volkswagen’s Car-Net service to track the car.

But he didn’t play along – and not because he had reservations about releasing the data, but because the woman had not renewed her GPS subscription. Even the pleading of officials brought loud Chicago Tribune Don’t use the Car-Net service to reactivate the location service. Instead, Volkswagen service insisted that someone pay the outstanding $150 fee first.

It went back and forth for 16 minutes before the fee was finally paid by a relative of the woman. 16 minutes delaying the search, which Lake County Deputy Chief of Police Chris Covelli calls “16 minutes of hell.”

When the GPS data was finally released by Volkswagen, the problem had already been solved, because the boy had in the meantime been found by a passer-by in a public parking lot, where the car hijacker had dropped him off alive and well. But what would have happened if the criminal had had the idea of ​​using the boy as a hostage and thus freeing his further escape?

Volkswagen then tried to blame the wrong decision on a subcontractor who was responsible for operating the Car-Net service. “Volkswagen has initiated a process with a third-party provider of Car-Net support services in relation to emergency law enforcement requests,” a VW spokesman said in an email statement, calling it a “serious error.” The statement did not explain why this error had occurred.

The question this case raises is, if an automaker’s Find My Car service isn’t available even during a child abduction, what’s the point of it?

With the Car-Net service, in which the vehicle is connected to the owner’s smartphone, Volkswagen promises its customers the use of “many smart functions that make everyday life easier”. In the USA, this promise has often not been kept recently because numerous Car-Net systems only work to a limited extent or no longer work at all because they run on 3G technology, which has not been supported by the largest mobile phone providers since the beginning of 2022.

The result: a big one class action against Volkswagen and Ford. One allegation against Volkswagen is that the group failed to adapt the 3G telematics in affected vehicle models to the next generation, i.e. 4G, although according to the plaintiffs this would have been possible.