SinglePointSafety

I have a 2.0 TSi Edition model and replaced the 19-inch wheels with Borbet alloy 17-inch shod with Michelin Cross Climate + tyres: my local tyre dealer is 'garaging' the original wheels/tyres and when the car gets sold, those will go back on. I obtained the wheel spec from Skoda, everything fits just as it ought to. Round here, the roads are absolutely atrocious (and getting worse) and the higher-profile tyres give a lot more protection and cushioning. In the short time I had the original wheels/tyres, I was impressed by both the ride and low level of road noise. The switch to 17-inch wheels means the ride is noticeably improved when encountering the road imperfections (round here, that's, er, all the time) and a bonus of a small but noticeable reduction in road noise (more to do with the CC+ tyres I guess rather than the tyre profile). I run the tyres at or slightly below Skoda's recommended pressure of 2.4 bar. (As an aside, I can't quite see why Skoda recommend the same pressure for 19, 18 and 17-inch wheels/tyres, given that the larger volume of tyre as wheel size decreases would normally suggest a lower pressure. Hmmm) Given my style of driving, I detect absolutely no downside to fitting the smaller wheels and as mentioned above, this wheel/tyre combo is available in the EU (most EU countries do not share the UK fetish for crazy large wheels with rubber-band low-profile tyres). My local tyre dealer will happily tell many stories of how the local roads wreck these fetish wheels/tyres, which is good for his business. His brother-in-law runs an alloy wheel refurb business - surprise, he's doing a roaring trade..... And one final bonus: my Borbet alloys are 5-spoke and thus much easier to clean than the factory-fitted wheels.

And if you do actually manage to fit a rear rack and carry multiple bikes, don't be that person who then illegally completely obscures the number plate and/or rear lights. Generally, the Police radar horizon for crime and disorder is set very high these days, but a few years ago I saw, on two separate occasions within a few weeks, cars pulled over for just this reason.

Kolorado, I'm shocked! Any dealer that was honest and dedicated to customer satisfaction would have their franchise removed, and the staff publicly executed as a warning to others. This is The Motor Trade, after all, they have standards! My dealer was aware of the problem and claims to have updated the software. The problem still occurs (like, well, today) but it's rare. If there is a sequence of button presses (eg turn off stop/start, change driver mode) which are all done before the map would normally display, which might somehow kill it, my observation is that there is no pattern that I can discern.

Root, true, the potential bias in any cohort is hard to control - Which? members may not be totally representative of the motoring population, as is the case for those that inhabit these forums or indeed make the effort to take part in any survey whatsoever. Decent statisticians try their best.... Absolutely no-one can say "this car good, that car not so good" until the data from various sources is collated and checked for bias. The warranty companies should indeed have some useful data for out-of-warranty cars, but again, there may selection bias - ie the people that actually buy 3rd-party warranties (where and how they drive the cars) and of course the age of the cars. Even allowing for all of that, it seems from the various data sources that if you value reliability, buy a Japanese car, and don't buy a JLR one, especially used.

Root, it's true that any survey has to be wary of selection bias in the cohort ("only those with a complaint fill in the survey" - that kind of belief). Certainly the Which? survey tries to minimise this and is upfront when they get insufficient data to make valid statistical conclusions. I've only had the Skoda for a year and have just taken part in the current Which? survey, and have done so every year for many, many years and been totally truthful about all of my cars. Interesting that of all the surveys I've seen, the 'usual suspects' top the ratings - Toyota/Lexus, Honda etc, and Land Rover at or near the bottom, with some variation in between amongst the different surveys. Of course the actual unbiased data - which we, the public, will never see because it's closely-guarded - is certainly easily available to the manufacturers. It's their warranty (and perhaps out-of-warranty) repair rate/cost. Any manufacturer will balance the desire to reduce this until the cost of making the vehicle becomes disproportionate. Don't think even the dealerships are allowed to see the totality of this data for the brand they sell, only what goes through their workshops.

Root, yes, I note that in some markets Skoda offer a 5-year warranty, unlike 3-yr in UK. The Which? car survey still shows that Skoda cars - especially petrol variants - do well in the reliability stakes. Diesels probably suffer from dpf issues with those owners who should never have chosen a diesel because of their journey profiles (which of course, those honest sales people would have pointed out....) KenONeil, thanks: the point I'm making isn't that cars are 'Friday afternoon nightmares' (that used to happen in the days when cars were literally hand-built) but now it's just the law of random numbers. Skoda's sales are easily large enough for these statistical variations to occur: someone, somewhere will get a vehicle with a lot of failures. There is of course a separate issue of poor design/implementation, as exhibited by the many folk on this and other forums who are having issues with the MIB3 infotainment system and linked ancillaries. That's not 'component failure' it's buggy, badly-written software and there's no excuse.

Skoda will have certain quality control metrics applied to their components, for example the supplier will have to meet a target for the failure probability (with given confidence limits) of a component. But no component can be made perfectly and/or a non-destructive testing regimen (if there is one) may fail to uncover an inherent fault, and thus it is accepted that there will a non-zero probability of failure. As Root implies, Skoda will employ staff with statistical knowledge to see if there a statistically-significant deviation from the expected failure rate - for example the infamous airbag recall that affected many cars such as Honda and Toyota. The issue of the failure rate of the emergency call system in VAG cars has now (finally) made its way to the press. All of the above does not change the simple statistical fact - if you sell enough cars, there will be some which, by sheer statistical chance, have a lot of faults, much more so than the average. As I said, that's how stats works. What matters is how the dealership (with whom the responsibility lies, not Skoda UK) deals with the problems. Many years ago we had a Volvo V70 which had just about every 'common' fault occur - but the dealer was brilliant and always found time to do the repairs/replacement, and the next Volvo we had was pretty much trouble-free.

Bit more explanation of the stats of car reliability. What follows is very much simplified, before the 'proper' maths and stats people jump in.... Consider a car with, say, 5 components that will seriously upset you if they fail and might even stop the car working. Let's assume that each component has a probability of failure of 10% in a given year. Thus the probability that your car is fault-free in that year is 0.9 ^ 5, where the symbol ^ means 'raised to the power of', so 0.9 ^ 5 = 0.9 x 0.9 x 0.9 x 0.9 x 0.9 0.9 ^ 5 = 0.59, so that you have approx 60% chance that your car is fault free. The probability that all the components fail in that year is 0.1 ^ 5 ie 1 in 100,000. But, if the manufacturer churns out several hundreds of thousands of this car, it's pretty much guaranteed that someone will be unlucky and have every component fail in their car in that year. The same stats does of course apply to assembly, but that is largely automated and most faults (according to eg Which? surveys) are component problems.

Interested to see the comment by Linni regarding the accuracy of the infotainment computed fuel consumption: in my previous car (Golf diesel estate) both the speedo and mpg figures were pretty much accurate, when checked with GPS and brim-to-brim. Indeed, the GPS demonstrated very clearly that the speedo had no leeway, so we had to be extra careful regarding speed limits. So far, checks on the Kodiaq's fuel consumption shows it to be accurate to within 1-2 mpg, probably slightly optimistic. Then again, I have changed wheels/tyres to 17-inch with Cross-Climate plus tyres, so road noise is even lower, ride is improved, and more protection against the horrendous roads in this area which would utterly destroy those 'fashionable' 40- or 45-section tyre/wheel combos in a matter of months. This wheel/tyre change, in theory, should have made the speedo a bit more optimistic, but it didn't seem to turn out that way. The other interesting thing is that when I first looked at these forums, some folk were complaining about initial take-up being sluggish. Not sure if that ever applied to the 2.0 TSi engine, but blimey, I have to be careful - our car is super-lively from a standing start, cf our Golf diesel, so perhaps it was always thus or Skoda listened and tweaked the throttle response. My only complaint is that, when cold and under very light throttle, the initial few 100 m has a slightly 'lumpy' throttle feeling, but that soon goes away. I'm always intrigued by folk who think that some fuel consumption 'magic' can be obtained from 3rd-party tuning boxes. I guess it's possible, if you drive in a certain way which just happens to coincide with the tuning 'sweet spot' but, really, the whole point of these boxes is to increase real or perceived performance (colleague of mine is really into this stuff and has, many times, related stories of his 'tuning adventures'). But, really, if you're interested in fuel economy, the best fuel-saving gadget is the combination of your brain and right foot: drive with anticipation and mechanical sympathy, loads of web sites and YouTube advice on how to do this, all of it pretty much entirely obvious. Note: any Audi or BMW driver found driving 'sensibly' will have their cars impounded by their dealer, for the crime of breaking the terms and conditions of their purchase (!)

Because that's the way stats works

In Europe, Skoda cars, including the Kodiaq, seem to do pretty well in the various reliability surveys, especially when you take into account the driving conditions encountered (in the UK, many cars suffer suspension problems, because of the abysmal state of the roads - especially in the area I live in) But, simple binomial stats (component fails or it doesn't) means that some unlucky person - that would be you - will have a car with a lot of faults.

Yes, it's really strange that it's only the map screen that goes AWOL: scrolling through the other screens, they were fine, hoped that might make the map screen revive, but no joy.....

Unfortunately the random disappearance of the navigation screen in VC display is a known issue, according to my local Skoda dealer (it must be very well-known for them to admit having heard of it). Prior to its 1st service, our Kodiaq only exhibited the 'black screen of death' a few times, and those occasions were in the month before service. My dealer told me that they had 'updated the Columbus and VC software' and to be fair, the problem has occurred only once since then (so not a complete cure) but, yes, it's a total mystery regarding the factors that cause the problem. Not a big deal for me since I never use the in-built nav software, but it's nice to have the map there as an additional 'where am I?' and an independent check on traffic on the main roads.

Charge-only USB ports in most (?) cars are capable of delivering 2 to 2.5 Amps at 5 Volts, but data+charge USB ports are typically limited to about 1 A. 12V to 5V plug-in chargers may support a higher power output and indeed may be capable of the 'fast charge' standard that some phones support. The 12V socket in the Kodiaq will only be limited by (a) the fuse and (b) the adapter that's plugged in (normally it's the latter that's the limiting factor). Big warning: not all of these plug-in 12V to 5V adapters are born equal. Especially the cheap ones, they can chuck out a **lot** of RF interference and interfere with your DAB reception, which you'll notice in areas of low DAB signal strength. The Kodiaq, to its credit, seems to have good DAB reception (better than my previous Golf) and also does a good job of swapping seamlessly into FM when the DAB signal fails.

There is a 'dongle' for Android Auto https://9to5google.com/2021/03/09/aawireless-android-auto-wireless-dongle-shipping/ For Apple carplay, have seen this https://cplay2air.com/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwi7yCBhDJARIsAMWFScNltP6fv7-rJWiq4WOdcU3URWoqJfAGC2iEao0Aqjy3kgKQUsrireMaAnExEALw_wcB Hopefully someone else on this forum might have tried one of these and/or have some more information (like: do they actually work, in a reliable way?)

SimonB68, a common tale of woe - I sympathise, it's what happens when dealers use a stone-age system which means that you sign an 'order form' but then someone has to carefully (or not) translate that into a factory order, and stuff gets lost in translation. A colleague went to collect his new car a couple of years ago, and it was missing the factory-fitted swivel tow bar (which also included upgraded cooling system etc). Short version of the story is that he rejected the car after 4 hours of 'very strenuous arguing' in the showroom, fortunately he'd paid a minimal deposit, which took many months to get returned. Your salesman is either lying or has very poor product knowledge regarding the 3rd key. But the important Q is whether or not this feature can actually be retrofitted in its full functionality by some form of software enablement that the dealer or 'tech guy' is capable of. People on this forum who are familiar with this personalisation option will no doubt offer their very useful advice. In the pantheon of hate, the top spots are usually reserved for anyone in the motor trade, estate agents and politicians: loathed for their perceived dishonesty and incompetence.....

+1 What MrTrilby says.... and in answer to Stratton (Why not?) because, deep down, Skoda knows that the built-in navigation is a dinosaur and it's simply not worth spending too much money making it better when it will soon(ish) become extinct. I would hypothesise that most car buyers are not at all bothered by the performance of the built-in sat nav: if they need to use it it's likely that their demands are modest and expectations low, so it will suffice. But for the rest of us who have moved on from such low-standard software, we demand reliable navigation, and with all the useful extra stuff that modern smartphone apps can offer.

The problem that manufacturers face is the 'supertanker legacy' infotainment systems, with an enormous amount of sunk cost in their development so that changing course is difficult and expensive. And they often start from the wrong place anyway....software which is counter-intuitive for the end-user, lacks options, some features are difficult to use, awful map update experience etc etc. Contrast this with smartphone apps, capable of rapid improvement and cognisant of user feedback. Thus I regard the sat nav in my car as a fallback in case my phone self-destructs. IMHO, the realistic way forward for car manufacturers is to do what Volvo (and Polestar) and some others have done or are planning to do shortly: admit defeat and install Android Automotive

DaveMiller, yes, you're right, the Columbus built-in nav does have variable zoom level, but it doesn't seem to be as intelligent as, say, TTGO, or as versatile in its zoom level. It's just altogether an unreliable navigation tool: on my last trial it tried to take me down unsuitable and unnecessary diversions, and it was on roads I know well, so i know that the suggested route was non-optimum by whatever standards would be applied. And nearer home, the map is just plain wrong (it doesn't acknowledge that two roads join up - roads that have been there for 20 years or more). MY21 cars with MIB3 might, just might, be an improvement, but as MrTrilby rightfully points out, without an expensive subscription, there is effectively no useful traffic data away from Motorways or some A-roads. Indeed, I'd rather Skoda not bothered installing any navigation and made it an option, thus saving me a few £££. Smartphones and their navigation apps have rapidly improved, and with Android Auto or Apple Carplay, you have a highly-accurate, high-powered ecosystem. And I believe soon there will be a dongle available which will facilitate wireless AA/Carplay for non-MIB3 cars. Job done.

In my experience of trying the navigation software in my Columbus MY20 Kodiaq, is that it fails the most important test - producing sensible routes. Tried it yesterday to navigate from a nearby Skoda dealer to my home, it suggested some very, very strange routing, for no good reason. In contrast, nav apps on my phone, such as TomTom GO or Google navigation, are nearly always reliable and have certainly never exhibited some of the crazy routing I experienced yesterday. I also much prefer their guidance eg variable zoom level, clear display of next junction etc As for Skoda Connect - perhaps I'm doing something wrong, but I simply cannot get it to work ie register my car, so have given up.

You are fortunate that you can even consider such low-profile tyres and big wheels. In my part of the UK, the potholes would utterly destroy these within a matter of months

I have exactly the same problem as Jfhuk - and that's with a clean install, Google phone (and thus vanilla android) with latest OS. I conclude that the app is simply clever useless. Lucky for me I have the pdf of the owner's manual on my phone....

Totally understand Mr Trilby, and that self-same thing happened to me with my previous car (VW) - an error in the price list description, minor issue (to me), rapid and very acceptable offer of compensation from VW, facilitated by an alert, responsive, moral, intelligent salesperson (they do exist). With my colleague it was an atrocious episode. Evidently after the order was placed, VW told the dealer that the car could not have those options fitted. The dealership did several unforgivable things, including not telling my colleague about the spec change, and not even reducing the price given that these options were not actually installed. They blamed 'human error' compounded by the original salesperson leaving the company (turnover in car salespeople is usually brutally high). There was no way that he wouldn't have noticed the omissions, they only fessed up on the day he went to collect the car and even tried to say the changes were minor and hence no price adjustment was appropriate (er, several £100?). As it happened, the revised price list(s) would have made it very clear that those options were not offered on that particular model. But he didn't check (and some would say, why should he?) Fortunately he had other cars in the family he could use, the dealer squealed like crazy when he rejected the vehicle. He had to fight (and involve VW) to get his deposit returned, threatening to go very public might have helped.

Mr Trilby, unfortunately, it's not as benign as that. The disclaimer actually means "when you order the car, don't rely on the brochure/price list/configurator. The definitive spec must be obtained from your dealer." And yes, you're right "between your order and delivery, we can decide to change the spec, and your dealer can tell you what the changes are". In practice, obviously the spec at order time will closely match the brochure/price list/configurator (and these three aren't necessarily consistent, as was the case when I ordered my Kodiaq - it was the price list that the dealer reckoned was 'correct'). In theory, you ask the dealer what the differences are between price list and reality, and the dealer, in their great wisdom, tells you. In practice, they will look all hurt and vacant, and mutter "dunno, what it says in the price list etc, what else would it be?". And as I said, don't ever expect anyone to volunteer what might have changed in the spec between order and build. Even if you ask, you're unlikely to get any useful answer, it will be up to you to discover the changes, as happened to me, by examining each issue of the price list in the months between order and build. At no time did the dealer contact me to let me know these changes in the spec, even though the price lists would have revealed them. I would guess that their attitude is "we have your deposit, you've waited months for the car, naaah, you're not going to walk away from the deal, are you?" even though a colleague of mine did exactly that a few years ago when his VW was delivered lacking some safety features which were not fitted because of some technical issue with that specific model.

On the configurator, Skoda is still using the following disclaimer Please note - ŠKODA reserves the right to change the prices, colours and technical data of models shown and described in the car configurator and in their price list: The information in this document referring to specification, design, equipment, material and external appearance relates to the time at which this brochure was created. Whilst every effort is made to ensure its accuracy, the information in this document is not binding and is subject to alteration. Some images within this document depict left hand drive models, with both standard and optional equipment shown. Please confirm exact specifications, prices and colour availability with your ŠKODA Retailer who will be notified of any changes as they occur Like I said in my post, remember, your contract is with the dealer, not Skoda UK