Park Lock release in cold

Wife's 15 Q7 is a bear to get out of park when starting cold, so when I got home from months away, first order was to find out *** was wrong. I actually bought a UK manual, but have not even had time to open it. What I found was the switch that releases what I assume is a solenoid locking pin in the gear lever is very hard to operate when cold. Solution was simply to press hard on the brake pedal, and it allows the shift lever to move freely.

Is this unique to her car, or have others found same?

I'm located in SW Ontario and did not have this problem but not as cold as your location. I do usually set the parking brake to take load off transmission lock pin.

Last week it got REALLY cold (near -40) and it was almost totally impossible to get the shift lever out of park. Had a look in the manual, and both ZF and Aisin boxes seem to share the same shift quadrant through the years. There is a release solenoid at the bottom right corner of the shifter structure (beneath the little control switches and buttons) and there is actually a procedure to open the panel up and push a screwdriver into a little funnel to manually release the shift lever latch when battery is dead (it would be a lot simpler to just jump the batter, but....). The solenoid and manual release is part of a lever that pivots on both sides of the shift quadrant assembly and goes to the front of the assembly to release the park lock latch.

When I first took it to dealer, the service manager told me to just let the car warm up, and as you might imagine, I took a strip off of him a mile wide. There are three possible causes, as this is 100% temperature related (and I might add, my warmer, previous experience of just pushing the shifter to the right side of its groove is NOT the solution). #1 is the solenoid is not strong enough to move the lever mechanism. That is obviously true, but since this seems to be an isolated problem, I assume that is either a works-or-it-doesn't part (and there is of course a replacement procedure). #2: is that the wrong lube is on the pivot points. Since this is temp related, this makes most sense to me. There is a spec Gxxxx grease, and there is a simple procedure to pry the two pivot bushings out to remove the relay lever. BUT: according to local dealer, their solution due to no individual parts being available is to replace the entire assembly. #3 is that something is in the way, restricting movement, but that should in no way be temperature dependent. It seems that somewhere during "the fix" or subsequent visits someone has been in there, and I STRONGLY suspect that this is the dealership's overkill response to making sure that a harness that was changed is in the right place.

Now you know why I seldom let dealers do anything under warranty - but in this case, my shop is full and I have no time. On top of that, I am sick of fixing VW's screw-ups.