Edit 5/26/24, added first paragraph:
Before reading this whole thread, please be advised that after considering reports from others, it appears that the situation I describe below may be due to an electrical problem in my specific car & may not be indicative of Touaregs in general. If others also have this same issue, please post. I will leave the rest of this post as it was before.
The short answer is-
Just because the light around the power point is on & a volt meter reads 12vdc when you stick probes into the socket, doesn't mean that power is really present. Check the fuse anyway, if the things you plug in are not working. I'll say that again. It's not a misprint. A meter showed that voltage was good, but the fuse was blown & devices plugged into the 12v power outlet would not work.
2 fuses, in panel C, control the 4 12vdc power outlets in the 2014 Touareg TDI exec. That panel is located on the passenger (right) side. Fuses 38 & 39 are the fuses in question. They should each be 15 amp (blue). They are located in the second row up from the bottom, leftmost 2 fuses. There are also 2 other fuse boxes in the car. One is a mirror image of C & it is on the driver's side in the same spot. It also has positions for fuse 38 & 39, but those are something different. The third box is said to be under the hood, but I haven't checked it yet.
Now for the long story.
When I bought this car a few weeks ago, the cigarette lighter outlet in front of the shifter did not work. When I plugged in a phone charger with a built in volt meter, it read about 6volts. The power light on my other charger would not go on when I plugged it in there either. ...but the bezel light around the perimeter of the socket was on, so power was present in the area.
Both phone chargers worked normally in the power outlet on the back of the center console. That indicated 12.4vdc with the motor off & a little over 14vdc with the motor running, which seems reasonable.
I wanted to get the other one working, so I fabricated a socket pulling tool & yanked out the front socket. A meter on the wires read full normal voltage, so I figured that the socket was to blame. I stuck meter probes inside the socket & got the same full normal voltage reading. I stuck the charger with the built in meter back into the socket & had the same problem. The other charger still didn't work there either. I figured that the center post in the socket was likely corroded or loose, so I tried a little scotchbrite. No joy. OK, so I ordered a new socket. When it came in, I installed it & expected instant success. ...but that was not to be. The results were identical. I thought that perhaps I had installed the old one by mistake, so I switched them again. There was no change. Meter probes showed good voltage, but the chargers would not work. I tried other chargers. The results were the same. That seemed quite strange.
Next I dug up some electrical diagrams. Page 1/9 showed the outlets, all 4 of them. So now I began searching for other outlets. One was inside the arm rest. One was by the hatch back. The one inside the armrest did not work. It showed the same low voltage on the charger, but the same good voltage on the meter with probes. The one all the way in the back worked normally.
According to the drawings, the bezel light on #1, #1 itself & #2 were all fed from a common source, main harness positive #13, which was fed from fuse 38 in panel C. It seemed strange that the bezel light was on, but power was not available from the parallel wired socket. #3 & #4 were fed from fuse 39 in panel C. These fuses should each be 15 amp. Just for giggles, I also looked up the 110vac outlet (device # U11) & found that to be fuse #40, which should be twice the rating of the fuses for the 12v outlets. If you have the 240vac outlet, then it's device U13. My diagrams showed 2 different U11 devices & showed one located by the hatch back. My vehicle does not seem to have the second one in the back, so it would seem that the drawings are not 100% perfectly representative of my particular vehicle. They do look to be about 99% good so far.
If you want to search the drawings in PDF, socket #1 is device U1, #2 is U18, #3 is U19 & #4 is U20
Alright, so now I see that the 2 devices with problems are fed from a common source. Despite the bezel light still being on, I figure that checking the fuse is always a good place to start. So I pop open the fuse panel that is in the same spot as my Jetta & have a look. There is no map of the box & there is no fuse puller. Many spaces have no fuse.
OK, so now I start googling for a fuse map & I find that I need to look at the second row from the bottom, all the way at one end. I look there & see things that don't look correct. Some more googling turns up a you tube video that shows the 3 DIFFERENT fuse boxes & lists what is where. THAT HELPED.
Next I found a blown fuse, replaced it, and normal operation returned to the 2 misbehaving 12vdc outlets.
I'm not sure how I was able to read voltage at the socket with a meter when the fuse was blown. That is still a mystery to me. I'd be interest to hear if another Touareg owner could pull the fuse on theirs & see if the bezel light stays on and/or if they still read 12v at the socket. I'm interested to learn if this is a normal state of affairs on this vehicle, or if mine has an unusual situation somewhere.
Before reading this whole thread, please be advised that after considering reports from others, it appears that the situation I describe below may be due to an electrical problem in my specific car & may not be indicative of Touaregs in general. If others also have this same issue, please post. I will leave the rest of this post as it was before.
The short answer is-
Just because the light around the power point is on & a volt meter reads 12vdc when you stick probes into the socket, doesn't mean that power is really present. Check the fuse anyway, if the things you plug in are not working. I'll say that again. It's not a misprint. A meter showed that voltage was good, but the fuse was blown & devices plugged into the 12v power outlet would not work.
2 fuses, in panel C, control the 4 12vdc power outlets in the 2014 Touareg TDI exec. That panel is located on the passenger (right) side. Fuses 38 & 39 are the fuses in question. They should each be 15 amp (blue). They are located in the second row up from the bottom, leftmost 2 fuses. There are also 2 other fuse boxes in the car. One is a mirror image of C & it is on the driver's side in the same spot. It also has positions for fuse 38 & 39, but those are something different. The third box is said to be under the hood, but I haven't checked it yet.
Now for the long story.
When I bought this car a few weeks ago, the cigarette lighter outlet in front of the shifter did not work. When I plugged in a phone charger with a built in volt meter, it read about 6volts. The power light on my other charger would not go on when I plugged it in there either. ...but the bezel light around the perimeter of the socket was on, so power was present in the area.
Both phone chargers worked normally in the power outlet on the back of the center console. That indicated 12.4vdc with the motor off & a little over 14vdc with the motor running, which seems reasonable.
I wanted to get the other one working, so I fabricated a socket pulling tool & yanked out the front socket. A meter on the wires read full normal voltage, so I figured that the socket was to blame. I stuck meter probes inside the socket & got the same full normal voltage reading. I stuck the charger with the built in meter back into the socket & had the same problem. The other charger still didn't work there either. I figured that the center post in the socket was likely corroded or loose, so I tried a little scotchbrite. No joy. OK, so I ordered a new socket. When it came in, I installed it & expected instant success. ...but that was not to be. The results were identical. I thought that perhaps I had installed the old one by mistake, so I switched them again. There was no change. Meter probes showed good voltage, but the chargers would not work. I tried other chargers. The results were the same. That seemed quite strange.
Next I dug up some electrical diagrams. Page 1/9 showed the outlets, all 4 of them. So now I began searching for other outlets. One was inside the arm rest. One was by the hatch back. The one inside the armrest did not work. It showed the same low voltage on the charger, but the same good voltage on the meter with probes. The one all the way in the back worked normally.
According to the drawings, the bezel light on #1, #1 itself & #2 were all fed from a common source, main harness positive #13, which was fed from fuse 38 in panel C. It seemed strange that the bezel light was on, but power was not available from the parallel wired socket. #3 & #4 were fed from fuse 39 in panel C. These fuses should each be 15 amp. Just for giggles, I also looked up the 110vac outlet (device # U11) & found that to be fuse #40, which should be twice the rating of the fuses for the 12v outlets. If you have the 240vac outlet, then it's device U13. My diagrams showed 2 different U11 devices & showed one located by the hatch back. My vehicle does not seem to have the second one in the back, so it would seem that the drawings are not 100% perfectly representative of my particular vehicle. They do look to be about 99% good so far.
If you want to search the drawings in PDF, socket #1 is device U1, #2 is U18, #3 is U19 & #4 is U20
Alright, so now I see that the 2 devices with problems are fed from a common source. Despite the bezel light still being on, I figure that checking the fuse is always a good place to start. So I pop open the fuse panel that is in the same spot as my Jetta & have a look. There is no map of the box & there is no fuse puller. Many spaces have no fuse.
OK, so now I start googling for a fuse map & I find that I need to look at the second row from the bottom, all the way at one end. I look there & see things that don't look correct. Some more googling turns up a you tube video that shows the 3 DIFFERENT fuse boxes & lists what is where. THAT HELPED.
Next I found a blown fuse, replaced it, and normal operation returned to the 2 misbehaving 12vdc outlets.
I'm not sure how I was able to read voltage at the socket with a meter when the fuse was blown. That is still a mystery to me. I'd be interest to hear if another Touareg owner could pull the fuse on theirs & see if the bezel light stays on and/or if they still read 12v at the socket. I'm interested to learn if this is a normal state of affairs on this vehicle, or if mine has an unusual situation somewhere.
