Driving tonight (7 mile commute from work) and not in traffic and had a strong burning smell in the cabin. The air con was set to 18.5° as it always is but my passenger said they felt heat. Touched the vents and the passenger ones (left hand of the centre console ones and the passenger one) were pumping out a huge amount of heat to the point we thought there was a fire behind it. My two were pumping out chilled air.

The aircon wasn't in dual control mode and both temps were showing as being set to 18.5°. Switched the air con off, pulled over a minute later and checked the car which was still running. Couldn't feel as much heat coming out so switched the air con back on and it returned to normal chilled air from both.

Car hasn't set light to itself while parked in the last 3 hours so guessing it's fine. Anyone any ideas on what it could be?

Sounds like a flap stuck or a dicky temp sensor to me - get a scan done with VCDS and if it was it will have logged a temporary code.

The same thing happened to me 2 times so far. The only difference was the hot air came into my face

75k kms on the clock, MY2014 Elegance.

There was no fault code just the usual "function restricted due to energy management" or something like that.

_{Yeh, mine's done it once, exactly as you describe. Was on motorway doing 70-ish and thought a fire had started at first.}

 

_{Turning the passenger control down to max low did nothing, but when I turned it up to max high temp then adjusted it back down, this seemed to 'free it off'. Been alright since.}

Edited 16 June, 201510 yr by Cymru Blackline

Mine did it during city driving.

After 10 mins I had to pull over and restart the car to stop it.

Turning A/C on and off or temp adjusting did not help.

My first thought was DPF regen relation but idle RPM was normal...