A friend of mine swears his ESP has only ever come on FOUR times (in quite a few years with his current car, A Clio 197 RS). All four times the ESP light flashed at him when he went too fast into a bend and the tail wanted to come out (oversteer)... I told him this is rubbish. His ESP has certainly come on thousands of times and the whole point of it is to do its thing without you noticing! Under normal circumstances it brakes whichever wheel it needs to brake without the light coming on surely? He maintains that I'm talking rubbish... So: does a car's ESP work without the ESP light coming on? Does a car in fact HAVE an ESP light?! Or is he confusing his traction control light with an ESP light?

Every time ASR kicks in the ASR light will come on the dash, that's what tells you it's working. not sure about ESP, I think it's all linked together.

I think

I light mine up quite often

I never noticed my ESP light coming on during track time, but it was working... quite a bit.

But I don't think there is a light, it's for traction control as far as I am aware.

ESP; when it's off, it's on, when on, it's off. HTH

Pretty sure it flashed on my Golf when it kicked in.

(Certainly does/did each time on the 330/RX-8)

Interesting one this, I think both camps are kind of right.

Here's my take

I believe the light does flash when it's fully working to reduce wheelspin

and cutting throttle. But I also believe that it's making many small and

unnoticeable adjustments that dont warrant the light flashing as well.

Here's why I believe that,

When my car developed the broken wires to the alternator fault I had

to drive it down to my indy for a fix. It was a damp morning and after the obligatory

10 minutes in the traffic, the light came on effectively telling me my ESP was inactive.

After the traffic cleared I had a small 50 mph seection to negotiate with a couple of 'fast'

roundabouts and my car had sudddenly developed the handling of a shopping trolley

caused by the real genuine difficulty I had getting even small amounts of power down.

The ESP system does also have an integrated Electronic Diff Lock I think I'm right in saying. :/

And with a grunty car like the vRS in normal operation and especially a mapped one

like mine I'd expect the EDL to be working overtime.

The sudden loss of this feature had definitely made an impact in how the car drove.

Now in the wet my car has woeful tyres on the front, but with the temporary loss of my electronic

aids, this showed them up to actually be in fact bloody awful, after the wires were

repaired which was a night and day fix. IE easy to tell the difference.

On the drive home I found the tyre performance had reverted back to just woeful again

like usual and the car had all it's predictable 'in the wet' understeer back again.

It was much easier to get my foot in it a bit on the same bit of road going back.

I just marvel at how much correction must be being made to compensate for

things like for example my crap tyres.

I think ESP is beavering away all the time in the background but when your driver input

requires 'physical' intervention like braking or cutting throttle then you get the flashing light then.

To be fair, you have to to be going a bit bonkers to get the ESP light flashing at you on any regular basis.

To be fair, you have to to be going a bit bonkers to get the ESP light flashing at you on any regular basis.

Thank you.

The long post above backs up what I think.

Most of the time mine was cutting in was small braking adjustments to the real wheels to keep me pointing in the correct direction. No light on.

Powering out of a corner on a damp road though means interupting the power to the wheels. Light on.

A friend of mine swears his ESP has only ever come on FOUR times (in quite a few years with his current car, A Clio 197 RS). All four times the ESP light flashed at him when he went too fast into a bend and the tail wanted to come out (oversteer)... I told him this is rubbish. His ESP has certainly come on thousands of times and the whole point of it is to do its thing without you noticing! Under normal circumstances it brakes whichever wheel it needs to brake without the light coming on surely? He maintains that I'm talking rubbish... So: does a car's ESP work without the ESP light coming on? Does a car in fact HAVE an ESP light?! Or is he confusing his traction control light with an ESP light?

I have a Renault and the ESP light comes on the multifunction display everytime, if the ESP activates thousands of times as you say then you are driving way to fast for the conditions, its like ABS it only comes in when something's going wrong and not on a daily basis (unless you're a terrible driver). I've only activated my ESP once in 6 months and that was just to see what happened, the whole display turned amber (it's normally black with white writing) let out a 'bong' and it displayed the ESP symbol and had some text below saying ESP active (I think).

5th gear did an article on ESP. Was amazing to see what it does to prevent an accident. It looked on this programme that it only intervenes in extreme situations but mine used to intevene on my BMW when i had the winter tyres on even when i wasnt cornering particularly quickly. I could feel it applying brake force to a particular wheel but TBH i cant rmemebr if the light illuminated on the dash. It might be different for different manufacturers.

Mine comes on at least once a week however, as that gives me the re-assurance that I'm not driving like miss daisy I'm quite happy