SkOmk4

Here we go again... new Samsung flagship series => new problems (@VW, Skoda, Seat): https://www.sammobile.com/news/android-auto-issues-galaxy-s24-seat-skoda-volkswagen/

So, just trying to better understand: before this "new" MySkoda App you were using the MySkoda Essentials? And all the features for the PHEV (e.g. charging, pre-heating) were also available? I have the same (very annoying) bug as you, but on the Cupra Connect App - most likely the very same rationale behind both apps... When I'm trying to charge the last few percent of the battery (up to 100%) in the morning before I leave, the App is failing. It' either saying the car is "Not connected", or in most cases "something has gone wrong" - see picture. What's most annoying is that each time the charging request returns an error message, I am able to start the pre-heating - which means that Car-Server-App-and-return communication goes well. So what's the "secret" problem behind the charging failure? p.s. in the picture the HV battery is at 99%, so that might be used as an argument for the charging not starting. However, in most cases I'm trying to charge from 95 or 90% and it's always the same failure, and always successful pre-heating...

The TOTAL battery capacity is 13 kWh, but the "usable" one is 10 or 10.5 kWh. I never saw more than 11 kWh delivered by the charging station for a 0-100% charge (total indicated by the charging App), not even on cold weather when the charging efficiency is a bit lower.

Indeed, while in hybrid mode, even when the ICE is running there's some use of the HV battery - it will sometimes give some electric support for the acceleration. That happens when you keep the default settings of the hybrid drive. However, depending on your battery needs along the way, you can choose to preserve a certain amount of battery (or even charge while driving) for later use on your trip.

That's absolutely normal, since you as a user don't have access to all 13 kWh of the battery - have a look at the details in the link: https://www.auto-data.net/en/compare?carId1=38016&carId2=38026&carId3= As far as I knew, the usable capacity of the battery in EV mode is closer to 10,5 kWh - that's what you can see on your dashboard between 0 and 100%. The rest of the capacity is hybrid-system reserved and it will not allow you to use the car in EV mode. Now the 11.5 kWh that you see on the charging App to get from 0% to 100%, doesn't mean that your battery has 11.5 kWh capacity. The capacity is smaller (10 or 10.4 - not sure), but the charging process has an efficiency which is not 100%, therefore, you are using 11.5 kWh from the charging station to store into the battery about 10.5 kWh - which means that about 10% are losses. That's not a fault, but this is how physics work... you might notice that at extreme temperatures (too cold or too hot) the energy losses might increase.

Exactly! The 10 kWh (usable) I have on my Formentor are now (at negative temperatures and with cabin preheating from the battery) just enough for me to drive home-work-home - about 26 km distance. In spring and autumn 1 charge might cover 2 days, at the limit... Other users might have longer distances for the daily drive, but as long as it is (quite)-short personal use and not longer business daily trips, the 40-42 kWh should be more than enough. If I'd have an EV with the largest capacity battery on the market, I'd still be using 10-12 kWh per day (in winter, less otherwise), such that with the 40 kWh of charge at cheap rate from Monday to Friday, I'd start the weekend with a full battery. That's not such a bad scenario, is it?

Anything is "fast charge" compared to the currently maximum of 3.5 kW that our PHEVs are limited to... (Octavia, Formentor etc.) 😁 Now on a more serious note, they specify on the press release note that it will be capable of a maximum charge rate of 50 kW: "Thanks to a maximum charging rate of 50 kW, it takes just 25 minutes to charge the battery from 10 to 80 percent" Source: https://skodamedia.com/en-gb/releases/1455

Oh, I've never used an Octavia PHEV, but the weight distribution of the Formentor is quite good - nothing to complain about. It's true that the Cupra has a different approach for the suspension - since they pretend to be on the sportier side of the VAG group. However, I noticed on the Rescue-Sheet of the Formentor that the HV-battery is under the rear-seats and the fuel-tank in under the trunk floor (spare wheel position)- which kind of makes-sense. The tank is only 40 liters, while the battery with the metal safety-enclosure plus the cooling circuit and liquid should be much heavier... So the heavier stuff is in front of the rear axle. I can only assume it's similar for the Octavia, but I'm not sure.

Not sure, but AFAIK they keep the same Li-Ion technology, so I doubt it's double energy-density. I'm directly interested, since the Formentor should also get a facelift this year, which means it would also get the updated PHEV. Not sure about the battery though... I wouldn't mind doubling my EV range 😉

That's true, not a huge saving, but the PHEV choice should be also pollution-related. At least that's how I see it and how I made up my mind for the PHEV. The EV range covers my daily to-and-from work trip, across town. If I can go through urban landscape without smoke behind my car, that's great! I know there's some smoke behind the energy I'm using in EV mode, but that's not produced in the city - and that's a way of moving the pollution outside inhabited areas. By the way, since this is an electric-range topic: I recently read the specs for the new Skoda Superb, and noticed they updated the PHEV (which was rumored for a while now). The ICE is changed fron the 1.4 TSI to the newer 1.5 TSI (same power output). The electric motor is the same, included into the same DQ400e gearbox, therefore the system power remains unchanged, BUT there's a NEW HV battery: it has 25,5 kWh capacity! And it comes with fast-charge!!! So it's about twice the range of the current VAG PHEVs (Skoda, VW, Seat, Cupra). The big question is: will the Octavia facelift this year be launched with the new PHEV system? I can imagine they will (quite)easily replace the ICE, but will they be able to "squeeze-in" the bigger battery? It's known that they avoid making major changes on the platform when they're launching the facelift...

MY changes in most factories (if not all) sometime during August. That doesn't mean your car is a facelift, it's simply next year's model; so there will be no visible difference (in most cases), since the changes mainly occur "behind the scenes"... ( e.g. software upgrades, components improvement)

Really???

Totally agree with you! Not veen on cars that had their own navigation maps did I use the car navigation. I always preferred Waze/Maps via AA. When I'm mentioning the Navigation Database update, it's not for the Navigation itself. On my Octavia I didn't have the Navigation, but I was still updating the Navi.Database. It's been mentioned around here, by users far wiser and more documented than me, that the car uses the maps in the background for decisions that are not always obvious for the driver. For instance deciding whether to coast or not when you lift your foot off the accelerator, depending on the road ahead - if it's a straight line in front, or if there's a roundabout coming. On the Formentor I only have the basic 10" screen, not the optional 12", therefore there's no Navigation Database in the background - so nothing to update...

Yep, that's the one, which means released November.2023, which is actually inline with what your infotainment is displaying: 23.11 offtopic: Ok, just to be clear: I'm not planning to upset or offend anyone here, I'm just saying it's complicating the life (and search process) for new users around here while they're looking for a piece of info. That's why there's a rule concerning this very point: one may check "Rules", No.5, "new Threads".

Did you check the water temperature on your dashboard before removing the engine cover? What I'm actually asking is: was this removal really necessary (high engine coolant temp), or was it just a precaution? I know you guys have some tough summer seasons down there, but I doubt Skoda didn't anticipate it's cars being driven during hot season.

https://updateportal.skoda-auto.com/ You can check on the Update Portal, simply enter your VIN and search BTW, this info is in several different places on this forum? Why do users keep opening new topics for every single question, without using the "Search" function on the Forum? The last few weeks a few dozen new topics were opened for stuff that are already discussed on existing topics. This fragmentation of the same problem on several different topics makes it difficult for users to find what they're looking for... No ADMIN around here to clean up the mess?

Most of those who experienced random reboots before SW v.1941, had no more such problems after the update. So your infotainment should perform better afterwards. Too bad your dealership is not helpful; I had my MiB updated by local dealer, but if they wouldn't have done the update, I would have done it myself with the instructions found here. If you really want to convince them it's a well-known problem, just show them the TPI for this specific problem - you can find it here several pages back.

Yes, no problem to upgrade from 1889 to 1941, you should be good to go. Just follow the steps indicated on this topic and it should be ok. You can also update the Navigation database, I see that your maps are since February.2021 Use the Skoda Update portal below, enter your VIN, download the Maps and follow the instructions on that web-page: https://updateportal.skoda-auto.com/en-US/Updates/

The PHEV doesn't need the engine (ICE) to run in order to cool or heat the car - the AC compressor is electric, using energy from the HV battery. That's why one can preheat or pre-cool the car in the parking lot before getting to the car.

Don't know, but it's not the first time that I hear some behavior changes after car Stop/Start. (and not only on Octavia) I never tried it, but as @jpg86 mentioned in the first post, he "fixed" it this way more than one time. Yep, that's why I'm blaming "Other conditions"; other users also mentioned that at lower temperatures they were able to go EV with no problem. In my case, when this happened the outside temp was not the minimum that the car was parked into. Too bad we don't know what those are...

I made a new entry, since the previous post was already too long. I found the Octavia iV Manual, in Section "Starting and Driving", subsection "Select Drive", there's the following info: Now the next part is what interests you: Basically, because of those "Other conditions" I recommend you don't stop the engine and restart it immediately simply because you want to use EV-mode. Allow the hybrid-system to decide when all conditions are met and it's fine to use EV only... You won't use too much petrol before the car will validate the electric mode. If that's not the case, then contact your Skoda dealer, 'cause something's not feeling too well on your car. Look for the "strike-through E" sign on your VC, when it's off go into EV-mode.

Can't say about Octavia IV, but here's an identical discussion on CUPRA Forum - it's actually the very same hybrid system from VAG, so the same conditions on parameters for the EV mode to be validated... https://www.seatcupra.net/forums/threads/fully-charged-car-and-then-it-starts-the-engine.474356/#post-5045932 I would strongly advise against this "solution" that you use to get back into EV mode. Apparently it's not really clear for the users why the system decides to go directly into Hybrid mode with ICE-ON, even when the HV battery is charged at 100% (as it happened to me also), but surely there's a reason behind this behavior. It might be related to: - outside temp, or to the temperature of the HV battery, - could be a bad status of the 12 V battery, - a set of several conditions combined - such as outside temp. vs. the temperature requested by the user to the climate control - a case when the car decides it's more energy efficient to heat via the ICE rather than via the HV battery which can be quite inefficient at low exterior temperatures... - there might be a long time since the ICE was last used - I had several consecutive weeks of exclusive EV-mode driving. I looked into the (Cupra) User Manual and the info is pretty-scarce on this topic. They only mention 3 conditions that need to be met in order for the EV-mode to be available, but in my case, when I had the car starting in Hybrid-mode with ICE, all the conditions were met. So there must be something else behind, in a second layer of validation conditions - which is not visible to the regular user of the car. Have a look into the Octavia User Manual, but I assume you'll find the exact same conditions... it's the same car. Finally, I would strongly recommend that once it happens, allow your car to run in hybrid mode for a while; after some time or small distance, the EV-mode will be validated (it will no longer be greyed-out on your infotainment), normally there should be an indication also on the Virtual Cockpit (as the Manual mentioned). In my case, after 2 or 3 km of normal drive the EV-mode was available and I selected it without restarting the car. This only happened to me 1 time in 2.300 km since I have the car. I drive it daily to work and back home (12-13 kms each way) and charge it every evening. When it started with ICE, it was in the evening, around 4 deg Celsius outside and I was preheating the car from the App before leaving home. When I got to the car and started, it went directly on ICE, even though the HV battery was at ~60%. I've had colder evenings since that event, I preheated the car in those cases, but it never repeated that behavior. So I don't know what's the secret behind... 🙄 The car was driven exclusively in EV-mode for 3 weeks (some 400 kilometers I would say) before it decided to start on ICE. Normally it shouldn't be the case for me... The car is 3 months old, roughly 2.300 km onboard, charged on average 6 days/week. According to some diagram I've read online (if I'm not mistaking @Jorgeminator also uploaded some info on a different topic in this Forum) the 12 V battery is charged: - while driving the car in any mode (hybrid or EV); - while the HV battery is charging (charging station). So I should be safe, as long as there's no faulty hardware on my car.

Unfortunately, opening a new topic for every thought or every question crossing peoples minds, is what makes it difficult for old or new users (such as you) to find what they are interested in... I encourage the confident use of the "Search" function available on the forum. Good luck with your color choice!

That reaction of the gearbox might just be the normal one - the kickdown effect as @Paws4Thot mentioned. If you're in Sport mode the gearbox is a lot more reactive than in Normal (or D), so I wouldn't worry about it... If you were unsure whether it was you the one who triggered the response, you could have watched the VC for the gear indicator: if it was you, the indicator would have said "M3", if it was the kickdown in automatic mode the display would have been "S3".

TPI stands for Technical Product Information... Meahwhile I used the "Search" function on this topic and found the TPI posted on June 22nd, courtesy of @Jorgeminator - you can read the symptoms and solution there (update to 1941 - obviously!). I also found that your SW version can be directly updated to 1941, without the two-step update I mentioned before; that is also mentioned in the TPI.