Hi all,

 

Anyone seen this, or have any advice?

 

I have a UK-reg Nov '21 Superb iV, owned from new & still under warranty. I'm on holiday and was cruising on an Irish motorway with the system set in "Sport" mode when I got a beep, an engine management light, an orange icon and the message "hybrid drive system fault - visit workshop". The car continued to run OK with the ICE engine running.

 

I pulled over to a parking area after a few km, and tried switching to pure EV mode. This was refused with an error about the system being inoperable. I then switched off, which produced a chorus of beeps, the hybrid error symbol in red and a "Stop" message. I waited a few minutes, restarted the car, and everything was fine. No error messages or lights, and everything has been working without any issues for the rest of the day.

 

Obviously I can't visit a workshop on a Saturday or Sunday. Ideally I'd like to call in, have them read the diagnostic codes, and tell me whether this was just a transient glitch or a minor problem that can wait until I get home, but the nearest dealer is a 2-hour round trip and I really don't want to lose a day of our holiday if I can avoid it 😞

 

Has anyone had this happen, or had any thoughts about whether it's likely to let me down over the course of the week?

Cheers

Steve

 

Just a reminder that bank holiday monday is in a few days and 99% of workshops will be closed then also. Youll have to wait till tuesday at the very earliest. 

I had a similar problem with my Superb iV, and it turned out to be very serious, so I would not recommend, that you continue driving the car. Actually, once the workshop got the car, they were not allowed to release it again, until the problem was fixed. They had to change a compressor for the cooling system and afterwards they could see, that the battery was leaky, and had to send the car to a specialist workshop to get that part fixed.

 

I suspect, that the battery was damaged, because I continued to drive the car for several weeks after the first warning. But sometimes the warning was there and sometimes it was gone, so neither I nor the workshop took it seriously enough.

I thought all new skodas came with Europe wide breakdown cover that lasts whole warranty period? Bash the spanner symbol on the roof panel and check with the agent. They'll send out a mobile breakdown patrol who can at least read the codes?

On 28/08/2022 at 09:55, Patent said:

I thought all new skodas came with Europe wide breakdown cover that lasts whole warranty period? Bash the spanner symbol on the roof panel and check with the agent. They'll send out a mobile breakdown patrol who can at least read the codes?

Good suggestion, so I tried it.

Since it's a UK-reg car it connected me to Skoda UK, and when I told the agent that I was on holiday in Ireland she said she'd transfer me to the European breakdown service. It rang, and then I was greeted with the inevitable set of options, "Press 1 for a new breakdown, 2 for an existing call, etc."

All very well, except for one problem - when calling via the car's "spanner" option I could find no way to get a keyboard up to type digits 🙄 It wouldn't respond to voice commands, nor did waiting do anything than an endless repeat of the options. Eventually I gave up & just phoned the breakdown service from my mobile. They logged the call, opened a case, and told me to keep driving until I could get to a dealer & have the codes read. The Vehicle Health screen on the Skoda app claims that there are no faults, although given how unreliable the other features are I don't have much faith in its accuracy.

The car's still under warranty, and Skoda have a log of my call, so I shall just do as they said and add the lack of phone keypad to my (ever-growing) list of bugs & issues with MIB3 to send to customer service. Yet another feature they haven't tested, it would seem.

That's very frustrating. From my Passat GTE days I seem to recall that hybrid error message is a generic thing that covers all manner of issues with the engine and the HV traction side. Your lack of EV power would suggest it's on that system somewhere. If there's no errors showing now, my only advice would be to check the battery coolant tank (the small one with the padlock and steel wire). If those levels are fine I'd keep driving until you can get to a dealer.