DaveFromSydney

I have the same problem too. The issue occurs for me mainly with the long-distance items, not those near by, such as in the post just above. I want to see that there are no pedestrians, or cars moving out of driveways or parking spaces, before I reverse across the road out of my drive. With our other car, or in the Skoda with the lights off, I can see well enough to be sure of these things. With the Skoda's lights on the screen is almost black.

Well they did say they replaced "The infotainment control unit".

Mine has no suffix but it is on 1803.

When you put it like that - yes, I probably wouldn't order them if they were a separate and expensive option. But here they come bundled with every vRS.

I only did one big night-time drive in the country so far. I found the lights adjusting to the curb side when encountering oncoming traffic, as designed. However people still flashed me. I still had to dip my lights manually to avoid that. And I think occasionally some people even thought the low beams were too bright. Ignoring the automatic matrix stuff - the actual led lights do seem to light up the road better than anything I had previously.

I have this too, and I suppose we all do. I wonder if I will ever trust this car enough to want to keep it for as long as I have kept previous cars. And when I talk to friends with recent Mazdas, Kias, Hyundais, etc they get none of the issues I get with over-sensitive Front Assist, Lane Assist, AEB, etc. I wonder if VAG can really be that bad, or if it is the difference between Asian and European manufacturers? They all, I suppose, must conform to European regulations with cars for the European markets but perhaps here in Australia they can use different settings?

That is what I suspected. It was not the big explosive deployment. There was no loud noise. There are no lasting warnings on the dashboard. The belts appear to work as before. The belts just pulled in several inches in a fraction of a second, pulling us back into the seats. It upset my wife since she has a sensitive sternum from having her ribcage cracked open for a heart bypass many years ago. At the time we were just coasting along at 60 km/h coming up to some cars at an intersection so preparing to brake. This was all triggered by the guy in the car behind getting impatient to get into the lane beside us as soon as it became free.

It would be a rare trip when I don't have some form of false alarm. It can be the Front Assist warning me with a noise and a big red crash graphic that I am about to crash into something, except I am not. It can be the Lane Assist warning me with a smaller yellow graphic and a series of "bong" noises that I must be falling asleep because I seem to have strayed from my lane for a long period, except I haven't and I can actually see my lane lines in the side mirrors. It can be the car, under control of the Adaptive Cruise Control, slowing down for no reason when passing a car parked in the kerbside lane. All of these can happen in good weather, daylight, the car and its sensors are clean. In 99% of similar circumstances nothing happens then out of the blue you get one of these. Today it was a very sudden tightening of both driver and passenger seatbelts and some warning message that, like each of those mentioned above, I have not the leisure of reading at the moment all of this is taking place. There was no car immediately in front of me but, from what I can work out, this was due to a car that had been following me accelerating from a position in my lane behind me to a position in the left-hand lane beside me. I suppose the initial part of that manoeuvre might have looked to my car like he was accelerating directly into my car although nothing he was doing was causing me any concern. I have read that a seatbelt pre-tensioner is a one-time device and it needs to be replaced after use. However there is no warning rom the car that I need to do that, which is what would expect with all of the other tests that the car does. So is this tensioning, which was VERY firm and sudden, something less than the explosive pre-tensioning that immediately precedes the deployment of an airbag? Has anyone else had a similar occurrence?

I also have found that the image is too dark, especially compared with our other car which is a Golf Alltrack Wagon that you might think would be similar, coming from the same VAG stable. Acting on a suggestion elsewhere on this forum I found that the image is actually better if you turn off the car's lights so there is no reversing light. That causes the reversing camera to crank up its "night vision". It is easy to see this effect by turning it on and off in an appropriate test situation. But it might not be such a smart thing to do in a real situation since your car will now be less visible to other cars coming along.

I had the control unit replaced and the software updated - now at 1803. My problems were fixed but the Sync issue remains. I thought that is just the way they designed it, even though our older VAG car manages to preserve the Sync setting.

I am surprised you need to do that. My car is in our internal garage, just 3 metres away from my study where I keep the keys. There are only thin plaster board walls between the two. I can press the button on my keys in my room to lock or unlock the car, so that sort of transmission easily travels the short distance. However if the car is locked I cannot just go into the garage without the key and open the car by touching the handles. I figure that the car is able to detect from the signal strength that the keys are not sufficiently close for the Kessy effect to operate. And even if you could open the door you could not drive off since it would not detect the keys being inside the car which is necessary to enable the ignition switch.

Hi Erik99. I also had 3 problems - not the ones that Jim2015 reported - that were not fixed by software updates but went away after they replaced the Infotainment Control Unit. You can see the details on my thread "Aussie software owner with software problems". After the replacement the software level was 1803.

I have had my car for over 4 months. Right from the first day I noticed all 3 of my keys, including the 2 that I never use, flash occasionally. I never could understand why. At first I thought it was trying to tell me the battery was low. That seemed unlikely on all 3 new keys. Now I just ignore it.

Here is a development with VW in Australia that would help all of you guys if it were rolled out to all of the VAG group around the world: https://www.drive.com.au/news/new-way-for-car-buyers-to-track-delayed-vehicle-arrivals/ "The rollout of technology that will enable new-car buyers in Australia to track delayed vehicles from the factory gate to the showroom floor has been praised by the Australian Automotive Dealers Association as a win for consumers. Volkswagen Australia is this week poised to introduce a new online search function that will help customers in the queue know the exact production and shipping status of their vehicle. Until now, customers had to rely on updates from sales staff at the dealership, which can quickly become out of date......"

I have had mine for close to 4 months but due to lockdown have only done 1600kms and those mostly in our (very mild) winter. Still, lately we have had days in the mid-twenties. I am someone who actually likes to blast cold air in my face so I miss being able to have two outlets at face level (centre and right) and hitting one button (in the days when cars still had buttons) to force the aircon to max. Our Golf Wagon has this and it is very effective in cooling you down when you start off on a hot day. Nevertheless I have found the Octavia in its default auto aircon mode does a very good job of getting the whole car to a pleasant temperature and maintaining it. And even if the centre vent cannot really blast air onto your face, the one next to the driver's door can blow onto your face, even if the volume is not so high.

Thanks for the linked posts, e-Roottoot. I can see a lot of disgruntled owners there. Still it seems to me to confirm that people do not expect disks to need replacing after only 10k miles and that what 5koda51mom experienced is not normal. Hence it is a matter where if it happened to me I would expect my dealer to remedy it under warranty. But maybe things, including dealer relations, are a bit different in the UK.

You are quite right, of course. UK and Skoda experience is the most relevant. However I find it hard to retrieve a relevant result with the search on this site. However for comparison I offer this: Our VW Golf Alltrack Wagon - a very similar VAG car to the Octavia - bought in Dec 2015, required front disk rotors in October 2019 at 69000 kms. It had not previously needed either front or rear pads or rotors replacing. It is driven 10% by me and 90% by my wife - mostly in suburban driving around Sydney. Her previous car was a heavier, rear-wheel GM station wagon, driven under the same conditions. It required front rotors at 45000 and 105000 and rear rotors at 59000. My previous car was a Honda S2000, a rear-wheel drive sports car. It required 2 sets of rotors for each of front and rear in the 19 years and 270000 kms that I had it.

A Google search on "how long should disk rotors last" will show a consensus of a minimum of 30000 miles or 50000 kms. So any that wear out in 10000 miles seem to me to be a warranty issue. Unless there was massive abuse. Disk pads I could understand lasting only 10K.

Ok. Thanks for that. I may have seen that, although it might be a bit different in the Virtual Cockpit of the Octavia Mk 4. I had imagined from the setting's name that there was some kind of distance readout, like "20 metres". It is kind of useless though. a) It is too small to notice - and not in a highlighted colour to help you to notice it. b) It is not self=explanatory - until now that you explained it to me. c) My eyes are on the road maintaining what I think is an appropriate separation. Occasionally I take note of the Heads-up display but that is all. There are many other such icons that I have noticed occasionally but have no idea what they are telling me. And some that beep, come up and then disappear before you can take you eyes off the road long enough to think about them. Big failure of the user-interface design to my way of thinking. We are not all like airplane pilots trained for months on the instruments and procedures.

Although I have an Octavia Mk4 RS the issues are the same. I have been having a lot of false alarms from the AEB although it has never, yet, slammed on the brakes. Following your suggestion I have checked the sensitivity and it was set to Medium so today I have set it to Late. We will see if that helps. There was also a checkbox for something like "Show distance". Does anyone know what that is about? I have not noticed anything in the dash except, sometimes I think, a big red icon of a car crashing. Of course when it happens the last thing I want to look at is the dashboard. I am too busy looking for the object that I am supposedly about to crash into.

Comparing my Mk 4 VRS wagon to our 2015 Golf Alltrack - same VAG platform but 17 inch wheels - my impression is that in the Alltrack the engine noise is more noticeable and the tyre noise is less noticeable. It would be interesting to try smaller, standard profile wheel/tyre combos on the Octavia. I certainly would not have chosen these wheels if they were an option. There is nothing wrong with the look or performance of the VW's wheels (see below), in my opinion.

I don't know about the comparison with the Mk3 but with my Mk4 VRS the noise is noticeable on coarser surfaces such as are often found on our freeways. I do not suppose it is much worse than a lot of cars but it is noticeable. Probably not helped by the low-profile 19 inch wheels/tires.

I have had punctures with our other cars and once needed to use the spare - or at least the road service technician did that. One occurred the day we brought a car back home 13 years ago.. The spare was needed. Another was with the new Skoda a few months ago. At the end of the first week the tire warming came on. I was taking it in to Skoda anyway so I asked them to look at it and they it was underinflated due to a small puncture which they repaired at no charge. The spare was not used, though.

Although I think had 1 or 2 punctures in my previous car, a Honda S2000, they were slow leaks and I was able to get them fixed at the tyre shop without swapping the wheels. Result: in 19 years and 270,000kms, I never removed the spare, or the jack.

I agree. And it is up to Skoda to fix this car under warranty - not me.