Brilliant timing given fuel prices, but overnight I've seen a massive increase in fuel consumption - from around 35-40mpg yesterday to around 15-20mpg today. Same driving conditions and all tyres fine. There's also a hot/burning smell after getting out of the car yet the temperature guage is showing the normal 90. The fan was also running after switching the car off. It's a 2023 model with 190 petrol engine.

Anyone got any ideas as to what might be going on? Wait times are so long for standard service slots in my area that they have suggested I ring Skoda Assist to do an initial check in case it's dangerous or liable to incur more damage in the meantime. I will do that, but interested to see if anyone has had a similar experience of this problem?

Regeneration of DPF?

Being a petrol it has not got a DPF, it is a GPF which regens / cleans in a different way. So off the accelerator. Once hot and running along. Did it actually use 4.56 litres in less than 21 miles or is that what the dash shows?

Consumption was based on the dash numbers - I don't take them as accurate day to day, but when they drop suddenly to the sort of numbers highlighted I see that as a red flag.

Skoda assist came out and found no error codes etc. His theory was that it was / is an OPC (as he called it) regen. I didn't even realise the petrol engines did this. I was quite used to it in my previous diesel superb. I'm a bit sceptical, but we'll see what the next couple of days bring....

I rather suspect a case of B.S here - the TSIs regen on a closed throttle, I can see absolutely no reason why this could affect your fuel use figures to the extent you say.

Oh god, I was a bit cynical before. Now I'm hugely cynical. I'll call them back out if it continues.

@CheshireBumpkin How many miles has your car done, & is it a manual or DSG? When did you fuel up, and do you use E10 or E5 petrol? Not that it should make any difference, but the filling stations should now be getting in Summer formulation petrol where as all winter since late October it has been Winter Formulation. PS, open the Air Filter housing and check the filter. Unless the 'Skoda Assist responder did. Was that an AA person?

Edited 22 March22 Mar by Evolution13

Thanks @Evolution13 - It's done around 17k miles and I filled up about 4 days prior with standard unleaded from a very high turnover Costco forecourt. It had been driven daily afterwards. I'll check the airfilter - it was a SA guy who came rather than the AA but he didn't really do any physical checks, it was all based on the PC.

Update: Early indications are good, and suggest he may have been right, unless something has just spontaneously resolved itself. I did a 40 mile round trip, mainly motorway, yesterday. The first 10 miles it was as previous days, with ridiculous fuel consumption. Then I started seeing much more typical readings in the 'live' MPG readout, and the average since start started to increase. By the end of the trip the average was just above 30mpg - double what I'd been seeing for similar journeys over the previous couple of days. If it has finished a regen and we start afresh today I'd expect to be seeing an average of mid-30s again in the coming days. I'm not quite ready to relax yet, but hopefully all will be well from here on.

Buy cheap ELM-327 OBDII Car Auto Diagnostic Scanner, download VAG DPF app and you will know everything about your car's regens.