I had the same thing happen to the analog clock in my B7. I took the car to the dealer, and the service rep told me it sometimes happens that the analog goes out of sync like that. The best thing to do, he told me, is to switch the engine off and let the car sit overnight. Every time mine has gone out of sync (by as much as 2 1/2 hours), letting it sit overnight has given the clock a chance to reset itself - and it has every time. If after doing that your clock still isn't back in sync, then by all means take it to your dealer and insist they replace the clock - like you said, this is covered by the warranty.

 

Thanks for the info Trans - although the answer kind of makes me scratch my head a bit. So the "fix" is to have the clock out of sync until it sits overnight (which btw seems to work for me as well - I have noticed that it usually is back on track a day later).
Not a very reliable source of time then and why even have it there if it's not going to work properly. As mentioned, this might sound a bit picky, but when you drop $20K or so on something, I just feel everything should work correctly. I figure I'll mention it to the dealer when I finally get to my 10k oil change and see what happens. I just wanted to be reasonably sure it wasn't some oddball programming issue that had other hidden problems also. Thanks again for the input

 

OneBDI, I know it sounds kind of screwy. But that's the advice my VW service rep gave me when I told him about it. He said it happens quite often in these cars, and no one seems to know just why. As long as the clock is running, VW won't pull it out and replace it due to its occasionally losing time like that.
It could be a faulty power connection, loss of signal from the digital clock (the analog clock adjusts itself whenever you change the time on the digitals due to their being connected), or even just the clock itself slowing down because of something in its mechanism.
Just do as I advised, and let the clock reset itself overnight. If it goes out of sync again and it really bothers you while driving, get a package of those really small Post-It notes and slap one over the clock face so you won't have to look at it.

 

How about disconnecting the battery? Wouldn't that make more sense?

 

No, it wouldn't, because you'd erase the memory on your radio settings, as well as the digital clock's setting - just to name a couple of things. There are other systems (which I can't remember offhand right now) that'll have to be reset after disconnecting the battery, which is why they strongly advise against you doing that. Like I told OneBDI, my service rep told me it happens quite often in these cars, and no one has yet figured out why. Switching off the engine and leaving the clock to reset itself overnight is, IMHO, the simplest, and least expensive, way to address this problem. Every time my clock's gone out of sync, I left it alone overnight and it reset itself - no sweat. Disconnecting the car's battery for this reason will only complicate things.

 

Im having this issue w 2013 passat. Its always 16 min behind. About to disassemble it and set it to 12 and reassemble, disconnect batt, reconnect analog and then reconnect batt. Anyone have a better solution because I tried all kinds different ways including what I read here.

 

Did it work? My clock hasn't been in sync since I bought it in 2017. I even set the analog clock to the appropriate time and disregarded the digital clock. It still fell even further out of sync on its own.