I'm driving the car two days ago and about 10 minutes into my journey, the car starts pinging with a bunch of errors telling me that "features" are unavailable:

• Hill Start Assist

• ABS / Stability Control

• Side Assist and Rear Traffic Alert

• Lane Assist

• Front Assist

• Tyre Pressure Loss Indicator

• Electronic Parking Brake

• Headlight Range Control

All slightly alarming - pardon the pun - so I pull over and switch off. Give it a few minutes and turn on, and the pinging recommences. The car is driving fine, and very fortunately, I am only a few minutes away from the actual dealer. So I pop in and ask them to come out and take a look. All the alerts flash up again, so I'm told that they can book it in for a diagnostic test, but the earliest they can do that is late April. Not ideal. So I phone round a couple of other Skoda dealers near to me, with similar results, late April being the best that can be done. So I say that I'll need to think about this, and in the meantime, is the car OK to drive, albeit with a lot of assistance features not working. I'm told that it will be fine as long as they're amber alerts and not red, so I decide I'm going to go home and think through my options. Several of which involve crushing this car or beating it with a large stick.

My journey home is around 30 minutes and halfway there, on the motorway, I glance down at the dash and what do I see? Nothing. Not a single warning light. Everything seems to be as it should be. I get home and the front and rear park assists work perfectly. The parking brake functions as it should. And since then, not a peep, not a single light on the dash, nothing... I have been in and out of the car five or six times and nothing has made a single sound.

So now I'm just confused? Do i still go ahead an book the car in for a diagnostic check which may tell me that nothing is wrong, or do I just put it down to some bizarre glitch in the matrix which has self-cured itself?

Or is my car simply laughing at me every time I turn my back?

Thoughts??

Gremlins .............

Not the furry little buggers either, Lol.

Put it down to that and carry on.

11 minutes ago, Tilt said:

Gremlins .............

Not the furry little buggers either, Lol.

Put it down to that and carry on.

Exactly that! I think it just decided to have a bit of a temper tantrum, got over it and moved on.

Is this a Mk4 hybrid? Multiple and seemingly random faults like that can be a symptom of low 12V battery levels on the MK3 - and there have been a number of Mk4 owners reporting issues with 12V battery charging.

I suspect there may be one or more software updates to be done. As a SEL FE from 2020 it will probably have had similar faults to mine - and I went through similar emotions to you.

My suggestion is to book the car in and let the dealer do their thing with the diagnostics - and point them at s/ware dates too. There are known faults with fixes. Down side is any warranty may not cover the updates, but if it’s a know fault then there’s a good argument that Škoda should pay not you.

On 12/03/2025 at 17:27, pg46 said:

Several of which involve crushing this car or beating it with a large stick.

Funny you should say this. In about 10 days time I am trading in my iV for a new fully EV (Not VAG!). This was my third and last Octavia and by a long way the worst of the lot. When I arrive at the dealer to pick up the new car I am going to take the Octavia round the back and give it a damned good BasilFawlty-style thrashing.

On 12/03/2025 at 22:13, SteveTheElder said:

My suggestion is to book the car in and let the dealer do their thing with the diagnostics - and point them at s/ware dates too. There are known faults with fixes.

I wouldn't do this. The dealer is very likely to make things worse, as they did with mine. IMO they simply don't know what they are doing.

4 hours ago, Sir_Ron_Norris said:

I wouldn't do this. The dealer is very likely to make things worse, as they did with mine. IMO they simply don't know what they are doing.

I guess we can each only speak from personal experience - mine is exactly the opposite. I have a high level of confidence in the dealer I use and a very good rapport with the reception team, Service Manager and the lead technician.

9 hours ago, Sir_Ron_Norris said:

I wouldn't do this. The dealer is very likely to make things worse, as they did with mine. IMO they simply don't know what they are doing.

Not all dealer service techs are born equal. I too have had no issues with my dealer. Changing to another product won't guarantee a better car or dealer service, so better keep your Basil branch handy for the future, just in case...😜

How was the weather when the "alarm storm" started? I have experienced similar several times, although not sure if absolutely all errors were present. It happens when driving in sleet or falling wet snow, with the slush on the road splattering onto the car's sensors. The alerts disappears, when conditions betters and it melts/dries up.

On 12/03/2025 at 17:27, pg46 said:

I'm driving the car two days ago and about 10 minutes into my journey, the car starts pinging with a bunch of errors telling me that "features" are unavailable:

• Hill Start Assist

• ABS / Stability Control

• Side Assist and Rear Traffic Alert

• Lane Assist

• Front Assist

• Tyre Pressure Loss Indicator

• Electronic Parking Brake

• Headlight Range Control

All slightly alarming - pardon the pun - so I pull over and switch off. Give it a few minutes and turn on, and the pinging recommences. The car is driving fine, and very fortunately, I am only a few minutes away from the actual dealer. So I pop in and ask them to come out and take a look. All the alerts flash up again, so I'm told that they can book it in for a diagnostic test, but the earliest they can do that is late April. Not ideal. So I phone round a couple of other Skoda dealers near to me, with similar results, late April being the best that can be done. So I say that I'll need to think about this, and in the meantime, is the car OK to drive, albeit with a lot of assistance features not working. I'm told that it will be fine as long as they're amber alerts and not red, so I decide I'm going to go home and think through my options. Several of which involve crushing this car or beating it with a large stick.

My journey home is around 30 minutes and halfway there, on the motorway, I glance down at the dash and what do I see? Nothing. Not a single warning light. Everything seems to be as it should be. I get home and the front and rear park assists work perfectly. The parking brake functions as it should. And since then, not a peep, not a single light on the dash, nothing... I have been in and out of the car five or six times and nothing has made a single sound.

So now I'm just confused? Do i still go ahead an book the car in for a diagnostic check which may tell me that nothing is wrong, or do I just put it down to some bizarre glitch in the matrix which has self-cured itself?

Or is my car simply laughing at me every time I turn my back?

Thoughts??

Sounds very Skoda. My 71 plate is due for changing but had loads of problems. Thought, briefly, about a new Kodiaq but these have had similar problems to yours, even the Top Gear Magazine long term test car. Agree with that most of the assistance systems don’t work with a bit of mist and cold but are great on a bright sunny day. Ironically.

On 12/03/2025 at 20:59, Warrior193 said:

Is this a Mk4 hybrid? Multiple and seemingly random faults like that can be a symptom of low 12V battery levels on the MK3 - and there have been a number of Mk4 owners reporting issues with 12V battery charging.

Not a hybrid, just the 2.0TDI. And since my post, it has been behaving itself. (Until the next time...)

On 18/03/2025 at 09:21, Bemil said:

How was the weather when the "alarm storm" started? I have experienced similar several times, although not sure if absolutely all errors were present. It happens when driving in sleet or falling wet snow, with the slush on the road splattering onto the car's sensors. The alerts disappears, when conditions betters and it melts/dries up.

It was a dry day, maybe a bit of condensation but not much. Like you, I quite often get an error at the start of a journey which then clears up after a few minutes, but I've never had so many pop up at the same time.

I had the same situation today. It started with a start-stop problem, then, message about the inability to display the total mileage and, after stopping, it threw up a whole list of warnings (problems with all assistance systems - 13 errors) and the car couldn't even be started. After about 40 minutes of the car being turned off, everything returned to normal and I could continued driving. I'll just add, my vRS is 2 months old and has a little over 1000km on the clock. And the weather was great, sunny and dry. We'll see if the problem recurs so I'll have to visit the dealer.

Edited 21 March, 20251 yr by enpe

On 21/03/2025 at 20:22, enpe said:

I had the same situation today. It started with a start-stop problem, then, message about the inability to display the total mileage and, after stopping, it threw up a whole list of warnings (problems with all assistance systems - 13 errors) and the car couldn't even be started. After about 40 minutes of the car being turned off, everything returned to normal and I could continued driving. I'll just add, my vRS is 2 months old and has a little over 1000km on the clock. And the weather was great, sunny and dry. We'll see if the problem recurs so I'll have to visit the dealer.

Sorry to hear that. Mine did it again this evening coming back home on the M4, so I'm going to book it in for a diagnostic check. Something isn't right if these 'errors' then disappear and the car returns to normal. Good luck with yours!

I'm wondering - could the state of the battery have anything to do with errors? I wasn't sure how to check the health of my battery, but I did notice that what looks to be an indicator on my battery is red and not green.

5 hours ago, pg46 said:

I'm wondering - could the state of the battery have anything to do with errors?

Dying 12V battery gives all the possible errors indeed. Not too rare all of them except for 12V battery discharging. I never had a full array of errors popping up, but had some exotic ones like electric drive error or gearbox error, and it was due to 12V battery, too.

For anyone interested, I went to a local VAG specialist this morning and they ran a diagnostic check. It's a rear ABS sensor that's causing the problem and I'm booking it in to be replaced. Will report back!

On 26/03/2025 at 12:21, pg46 said:

For anyone interested, I went to a local VAG specialist this morning and they ran a diagnostic check. It's a rear ABS sensor that's causing the problem and I'm booking it in to be replaced. Will report back!

It was indeed a rear ABS sensor that was triggering all the alerts. Had it replaced this morning and all good so far. I have a good bit of driving coming up in the next few days, so time will tell.

For anyone still following this saga, it's unfortunately not yet over. Two days after the car came back, I was heading North up the M6 when, you've guessed it, BING, BING, BONG....... Sigh.

So I took it back into my garage this morning. They ran diagnostics and it seems to be the same sensor (Rear Left) as the cause. I'm taking it in again after the Easter holidays for more checks.

Hopefully, (gulp!) this is my final post on this topic. After some more investigation, we've replaced the wheel bearing as well as the sensor. My mechanic spoke to his old boss who still works for Skoda, and immediate advice was to check the wheel bearing. The bearing had a crack in it which got worse the hotter it ran, and the ABS sensor then threw up all the errors. We've replaced both the bearing and the sensor and the car has been very well-behaved for the past two weeks now.

So, if it happens to you and the error codes show up a failed ABS sensor, have the wheel bearing inspected at the same time, as it is likely to be the real culprit.