3 observations/questions...

[viscount]

As I have been driving around a 2005 toureg while my car's in (or maybe not ) the shop there were 2 things the toureg has which our phaetons do not which were itens of conversation recently- first it has the double xenon lights; I thought we did not get them due to some VW NA decision about lighting and American standards etc....Second (and I forget the technical term) but the radio has the usual descriptive script of what's playing and who's playing it rather than just the radio station info that we have
Third and not toureg related but nonetheless of interest is that I was under the impression that when you press manual on the infotainment system the vehicle's manual was indeed available...but it always tells me function not allowed or something to that effect. The salespeople told me that is indeed correct- NA phaetons do not have the "online" service manual as the European counterparts do. And this is not only for English, but in French for example which also does not function ....Is this accurate?! It seems a gross mistep, and annoying one as well!
Hopefully someone can help me see the light!
Ed.

[jmdpjd1]

Ed

My 04 Touareg has the double xenon lights. (Xenon for high beam as well as low). the second set of lights on the Treg is flash to pass only unless you vag-com to use them as a second high beam.

I don't have nav but my standard radio also has RDS that works in the Treg.

I do find thiese two items frustrating as well. they should also be in the Phaeton.

I can't comment on the manual since I lack nav in the Treg.

[viscount]

Thanks, that makes sense... the manual is not availble it seems- the "real" manual says that the button is for a function "not supported"...
Ed

[PhaetonChix]

The "Manual" button was a supported feature in European Phaeton, but not NA units. I guess they figure we prefer to read our owners manual in the privacy of our homes and not in the car. The manual button has been replaced with an "Info" button on the 2005 head units. When a navigation disk is in the navigation slot, the vehicle will display a compass, physical location and latitude/longitude.

[PanEuropean]

Hi Ed:

I'll try to answer some of the questions, but note carefully which answers are 'guesses' and which are 'fact'.

1) Double Xenon Lights - The Touareg is a newer vehicle than the Phaeton. The lights in the Touareg are actually a bit of a hybrid lighting unit: The outboard light is a 'bi-xenon', meaning, it has a shutter in it that moves when the driver selects high beam, so there is an instantaneous switchover from low beam pattern light focusing to high beam light focusing. The inboard halogen light, which has a projector type lens, will illuminate when high beams are selected on (if the truck has been configured that way, using a scan tool), however, the inboard light is actually a supplemental high beam light, not the primary high beam light. The primary high beam light is the outboard one, with the shutter in the 'high' position. (All facts.) The European Phaetons that are ordered with double xenon lights (meaning, two xenon projectors on each side) have two 'single' xenons, the outboard provides a low beam pattern, and the inboard provides a high beam pattern. North American certification requirements probably don't permit the slight time lag required for ignition of the inboard xenon lamp when the high beams are selected on. (Educated guess.)

2) Radio Data Service North American Phaetons support static RDS (display of up to 8 characters that identify the station), but the ability to display dynamic RDS - the text that changes and shows the song lyrics, etc. - is not enabled on North American Phaetons. See this post for more information: RDS Radio Text Function. Read between the lines - there are some things I can't put in writing, if you get my drift. (All facts.) I am more than surprised that VW of NA has chosen to enable dynamic RDS on the Touaregs. I wonder if this was an oversight, or a change of heart?

3) On-board Electronic Owner Manual The North American Phaetons are fully capable of supporting the electronic owner manual function. I bought a navigation CD for Germany, stuffed it in my Phaeton, and the electronic owner manual function worked perfectly. See this post: Electronic Owner Manual works on North American Phaetons. The only reason the function does not work on North American Phaetons is that the navigation CD's for North America do not contain the required HTML files that comprise the owner manual. These exist in English to serve the UK market. (All facts, now the speculation follows.) My guess is that VW of NA chose not to support this feature for one of two reasons: Either the lawyers killed the idea, because they were worried about driver distraction, or, the computer industry has not yet invented a form of storage media large enough to contain all the asinine warnings that they wanted to add to the quite straightforward and factual European English language electronic owner manual. FYI, the paper (printed) owner manual in North America weighs more than twice what the European one weighs.

Judging from what PhaetonChix posted above about the 2005 models, it appears that we will never get this feature - at least, not from VW. But... one of our forum members, who has great skill in the computer industry, is currently in possession of my German CD, with the owner manual files, and is working on a project to combine these files with a North American navigation CD, to see if we can have this feature. Stay tuned...

Michael


Modified by PanEuropean at 2:52 PM 2-20-2005

[viscount]

Thanks for the excellent and comprehensive post. I would be interested in learning more about #3...Great that we have some very talented people here!
Ed.

[uberanalyst]

1) Double Xenon Lights - The Touareg is a newer vehicle than the Phaeton. The double xenon lights in the Touareg are actually a bit of a hybrid lighting unit: The outboard light is a 'bi-xenon', meaning, it has a shutter in it that moves when the driver selects high beam, so there is an instantaneous switchover from low beam pattern light focusing to high beam light focusing. The inboard xenon light will illuminate when high beams are selected on (if the truck has been configured that way, using a scan tool), however, the inboard light is actually a supplemental high beam light, not the primary high beam light. The primary high beam light is the outboard one, with the shutter in the 'high' position. (All facts.)[/QUOTE]

Michael:

You made me just go out to the garage and make sure I had the correct understanding of how the lights worked on my Touareg. There is only ONE pair of xenons, not two. The Touareg has:

1. Xenon bi-xenon outboard: You can hear the shutter "clunk" when you switch between high and low beams by pushing the stalk forward.

3. Halogen high-beams inboard: These only come on when you "flash-to-pass" by pulling back on the stalk temporarily. Unlike xeons, these halogens don't require any time to warm up. As you noted, the halogens aren't used for the regular high-beam function.

As an aside, one of the cool things you can do with the VAG-COM is to code the system so that turning on the high-beams brings on BOTH the halogen and xenon high-beams full time. So you get 2 pairs of high beams.

- Dave

[PanEuropean]

Dave, thanks for catching that error. I have corrected the text in my original post, above.

Michael

[Phat Cat]

My loaner Touareg (900 miles on the odometer) had one other feature that my Phaeton does not (yet): about a million rattles and squeaks when traversing the washboard dirt roads up here. There were so many different noises coming from all corners of the car that I felt as if something would just fall off at any moment. Combined with the brutally stiff suspension, I can't imagine actually taking the Treg off-road.

I did like the design and the finish though.

[PanEuropean]

Archival Note: A related post about dual xenon lights on the Phaeton: Dual xenons. (EU Phaetons)

[PanEuropean]

Quote, originally posted by jmdpjd1 »

My 04 Touareg has the double xenon lights. (Xenon for high beam as well as low).

Joe:

I think that your Touareg may have projector lenses on both the high and low beam headlights, but I do suspect that the high beam lamps are actually halogen and not xenon arc. I was doing some work on a Touareg last week that had 4 projector type lenses on the front of it (two low beam, two high beam) and I noticed that although the low beam lamps were 'bi-xenon' (meaning, they had a shutter in them to enable the beam pattern to be changed from low beam to high beam), the inboard lamps were actually halogen.

Not sure if this applies to your truck, but you might want to check.

Michael

[jmdpjd1]

Michael,

After rereading my post- The second or inner lens on the Touareg is halogen and is used for flash to pass only (or vagged to be an additional high beam). The outside lens is the bixenon. As you have clarified for us.