We bought our Scala Monte Carlo Edition 1.5 tsi back in December and from late January it has had both mechanical problems and electronic gremlins.

The mechanical problem have mostly been sorted, new rear discs and pads that were making noises like a wheel bearing was rumbling, the gearbox has had a software update and a reset (it's still not perfect). And the road noise is just the high dB tyres and lack of sound insulation.

The electronic gremlins were put down to a failing 12v battery which was replaced a week ago. However things are still not as they should be.

The ACC has twice not slowed the car to match the speed of the traffic.

We have had automatic headlights malfunction.

Random parking sensor activation in slow traffic. Collision detection with braking when nothing was there. Pressing the accelerator from lower speeds to do an overtake and nothing happens(one had my foot flat to the floor)

I also suspect the car might be unlocking and relocking itself as just happened to catch the indicators flashing and mirrors folding in when letting our dogs into the garden before bed. My keys were indoors in a Faraday pouch which I know works.

My wife won't now drive the car as she is worried about what's going to happen next.

Is this just par for the course with new cars or have we got a lemon?

Sounds very much a lemon.

Definitely a lemon, I've wasted my money on new cars since 2002 and never had one with faults like these. I would take it back to be sorted out ASAP and insist on a courtesy car for the duration of the repairs.

Sounds like a lemon to me,

I got my Scala Monte Carlo 1.5 tsi new back in June 2024, only problems I have had are small like false alerts saying indicator lights are not working which disappear on an engine restart.

Yesterday the car would unlock but all the screens were blank and it wouldn't start. Called Skoda Assist who arrived surprisingly quickly. The battery had gone flat, he boosted it to get it running and then did a load of checks to see if there was a parasitic drain, his suspicion is one of the on board systems isn't shutting down. He advised I leave it hooked up to my Ctek box until it's been back in. So it's going in on the 26th for more investigation but I have lost all faith in it now and just want rid of it. Such a shame as my Octavia and my Kodiaq were good cars.

Today's random error.

On 14/05/2026 at 22:48, Liteboy said:

We bought our Scala Monte Carlo Edition 1.5 tsi back in December and from late January it has had both mechanical problems and electronic gremlins.

The mechanical problem have mostly been sorted, new rear discs and pads that were making noises like a wheel bearing was rumbling, the gearbox has had a software update and a reset (it's still not perfect). And the road noise is just the high dB tyres and lack of sound insulation.

The electronic gremlins were put down to a failing 12v battery which was replaced a week ago. However things are still not as they should be.

The ACC has twice not slowed the car to match the speed of the traffic.

We have had automatic headlights malfunction.

Random parking sensor activation in slow traffic. Collision detection with braking when nothing was there. Pressing the accelerator from lower speeds to do an overtake and nothing happens(one had my foot flat to the floor)

I also suspect the car might be unlocking and relocking itself as just happened to catch the indicators flashing and mirrors folding in when letting our dogs into the garden before bed. My keys were indoors in a Faraday pouch which I know works.

My wife won't now drive the car as she is worried about what's going to happen next.

Is this just par for the course with new cars or have we got a lemon?

You should have bought 1.0 TSI with 110hp or 115 . They are much better engines then 1.5 TSI.. I had zero problems with mine 2021 Scala except with infotainment which was sorted with software update. Brakes are still original after 65.000 km

On 14/05/2026 at 21:48, Liteboy said:

The electronic gremlins were put down to a failing 12v battery which was replaced a week ago.

Yet another easy default of blaming the battery and not the car (or, but not in your case driver/owner battery use/abuse and neglect).

Lots of issues being blamed on scapegoat "bad" batteries or batteries low in charge without the Dealerships looking to see or asking why the batteries are low or flat. I only posted this morning, on a low battery thread, I thought it more likily many of these could be a VW computer programing error possibly and/or a part(s)/system(s)/wiring/connection(s) fault(s) rather than the scapegoat car battery.

German marques have been (over) complex for many decades and the more modern any make of car the more complex the computer, electronic, electyrics, systems are. Throw in the VW DSG, cylinder shut downs, climatronic, all the "aids", "assists" and conveniences and then a 2025 car and the potentials are great for possible issues and VW don't seem that that great with some of the stuff they make or asssemble or that great with the computer software and hardware as some other manufacturers might be.

I don't blame your wife, your car is unreliable and often out of the driver's control or perhaps ability to get where it's going or back home or to the Dealership under it's own reliable power.

I hope it turns out to be something minor (after proper diagnostics if you can get this from the Dealership/seller) and it becomes more reliable. VWŠkodas are no longer less expensive car to buy and maintain and certainly not with some VW parts and VW parts longivity.

Edited 19 May19 May by nta16

6 minutes ago, nta16 said:

Yet another easy default of blaming the battery and not the car (or, but not in your case driver/owner battery use/abuse and neglect).

Lots of issues being blamed on scapegoat "bad" batteries or batteries low in charge without the Dealerships looking to see or asking why the batteries are low or flat. I only posted this morning, on a low battery thread, I thought it more likily many of these could be a VW computer programing error possibly and/or a part(s)/system(s)/wiring/connection(s) fault(s) rather than the scapegoat car battery.

German marques have been (over) complex for many decades and the more modern any make of car the more complex the computer, electronic, electyrics, systems are. Throw in the VW DSG, cylinder shut downs, climatronic, all the "aids", "assists" and conveniences and then a 2025 car and the potentials are great for possible issues and VW don't seem that that great with some of the stuff they make or asssemble or that great with the computer software and hardware as some other manufacturers might be.

I don't blame your wife, your car is unreliable and often out of the driver's control or perhaps ability to get where it's going or back home or to the Dealership under it's own reliable power.

I hope it turns out to be something minor (after proper diagnostics if you can get this from the Dealership/seller) and it becomes more reliable. VWŠkodas are no longer less expensive car to buy and maintain and certainly not with some VW parts and VW parts longivity.

My feeling is that the dealerships rely too much on plugging it in and then having to get permission to order and replace any parts it might need, this then drags out any repair they want to try. Something somewhere is causing a drain and then sending all the electronics haywire.

I have written to the dealer principal documenting everything and advising that if this repair fails I will be rejecting the car. It has only done 2500 painful miles.

It's away of getting more revenue and profits into the Dealership and perhaps because or to avoid th time thus expense of proper diagnostics and the need for more trained personel and equipment.

Once out of warranty particular the Dealerships, not just VAG ones either, go looking for chargeable work whether it's there or not. Our local Dealership if IIRC found £1, 700 of work on a"free health check" on my wife's car including a clutch change because the clutch pedal was "hard". This really conccerned my wife as we'd had a lot of bad luck with a previous gearbox conversion and subsequent clutch operation sustems including British motorsport made parts (wrong type of rubber in the new manufactured o-ring!) and only time with no issues (still reassured her the Fabia clutch didn't need changing. The very next "free health check" only a couple of months later by the same Dealership and person made none of the previous finds and the only thigs I'd changed in the meantime was the front discs and pads as they wer low (but not urgent).

The Dealerships might find it harder to con the con-men at VWŠkoda so have to work harder at that and VW are happy to avoid as much as they can by starting with cheapest brush-offs.

I'm afarid generally this is much of the British motor trade attiude they veiw customers as something nasty and smelly they trod i and on the soles of their shoes and boots. Not all, you can get good people in bad companies and alsobad people in good companies and certainly not all customers are good and honest.

If you have the opition to use another Dealership you could research and enquire whether they might be better if you can't bounce the car back, and they will make that very difficult.

Good luck, hopefully it might be something simple, or remedy on a Technical Bulletin filed away somewhere.

To be honest I think your dealership is pretty bad and thats being polite! Probably a good idea to try somewhere else and contact Skoda direct to complain.

The story so far is,went to the local Skoda dealer but the list of issues was beyond what they were expecting so nothing was done.I then went to the supplying dealership and the car is booked in for a week this month for investigation.

I have had to call Skoda assist twice as the battery was too flat to start the car, I could have used my Noco boost pack but needed it logged so left well alone. It is now plugged into my Ctek MXS all the time is isn't in use. It has been suggested that I don't drive it enough so the battery will go flat, I do about 6000 miles a year and neither my Octavia Vrs or my Kodiaq Sportline had issues with their batteries so am not going to accept that.

So it's still a case of watch this space.

11 hours ago, Liteboy said:

I do about 6000 miles a year and neither my Octavia Vrs or my Kodiaq Sportline had issues with their batteries so am not going to accept that.

Unless your Octavia and Kodaiq were 2025 models then they probably didn't use as much electric as a 2025 model but that's still no excuse for excessive battery drain possibly from a fault or faults in the hardware and software of your current 2025 car and as you are using a battery charger maintainer once the battery is fully recharged it will be maintained at that level, until you use the car again or disconnect the maintainer.

6,000 miles a year isn't a lot but it depends on how those miles are distributed and driven and many other cars (including VWs) do even less annual mileage without your issues, though of course any modern cars (say fromx-years back) aren't best suited for the short journey use that they actually get in the real world (particularly the diesels which were formerly picked for such use).

If you have an AGM battery do make sure the MXS Mode button is set to this, from flat the MXS will take an uninterupted charge time of 24+ hours to fully recharge to 100% (quotes 80% charge for 60ah battery of 12 hours and 26 hours for 110 ah battery, only 80% remember about the same as the car's computer system aims for).

You could use the MXS "Recond" mode as your car battery has been deeply discharged (more than once by the sound of it) which may take a little longer that the previous figures but you really need to get your battery to 100% fully charged as often and long as youi possibly can if you want to carry on using the car until some oneat VWŠkoda UK or the VWŠkoda Dealership(s) pull their finger out and get this sorted one way or another.

They need all the practice they can get ready for the Euro 7 cars and 2027 whixch doesn't boded well if they're still sorting 2025 models and their issues.

Good luck, don't let it slide but also don't let it affect you too much, it's only a lump of metal, plastic and computer programs, very, very annoying but of realtively little importance to real life. Again good luck.

1 minute ago, nta16 said:

Unless your Octavia and Kodaiq were 2025 models then they probably didn't use as much electric as a 2025 model but that's still no excuse for excessive battery drain possibly from a fault or faults in the hardware and software of your current 2025 car and as you are using a battery charger maintainer once the battery is fully recharged it will be maintained at that level, until you use the car again or disconnect the maintainer.

6,000 miles a year isn't a lot but it depends on how those miles are distributed and driven and many other cars (including VWs) do even less annual mileage without your issues, though of course any modern cars (say fromx-years back) aren't best suited for the short journey use that they actually get in the real world (particularly the diesels which were formerly picked for such use).

If you have an AGM battery do make sure the MXS Mode button is set to this, from flat the MXS will take an uninterupted charge time of 24+ hours to fully recharge to 100% (quotes 80% charge for 60ah battery of 12 hours and 26 hours for 110 ah battery, only 80% remember about the same as the car's computer system aims for).

You could use the MXS "Recond" mode as your car battery has been deeply discharged (more than once by the sound of it) which may take a little longer that the previous figures but you really need to get your battery to 100% fully charged as often and long as youi possibly can if you want to carry on using the car until some oneat VWŠkoda UK or the VWŠkoda Dealership(s) pull their finger out and get this sorted one way or another.

They need all the practice they can get ready for the Euro 7 cars and 2027 whixch doesn't boded well if they're still sorting 2025 models and their issues.

Good luck, don't let it slide but also don't let it affect you too much, it's only a lump of metal, plastic and computer programs, very, very annoying but of realtively little importance to real life. Again good luck.

The car has an EFB+ battery where I am pretty sure both of the others had AGM batteries which seems to stand up to low usage better. I do mostly short journeys with the odd trip to Newcastle where our son is and over to Norwich where the in-laws are.

We did a 70 mile round trip yesterday so didn't put the Ctek on it last night. I stuck a meter on it this morning and it was 12.5 v and watched it drop to 12.1 v and all I had done is open the door and bonnet. The car seems to click,buzz and whir all the time locked or unlocked with my keys well away in their Faraday pouch.

Currently feeling like an expensive mistake buying it.

Liteboy, nothing like your problems with my 23 plate 1.5 SE Manual but I have noticed the "click, buzz and whir" with the (conventional steering lock) key removed. Most puzzling is the noise that comes from somewhere below the battery. I lifted the bonnet to refill the screenwash and these sounds continued for the whole time the bonnet was open. Weird.

This piqued my interest enough to get an OBDeleven to keep an eye on the battery, amongst other things. According to 'live data', the battery drain (which I would expect to be close to zero with the ignition off) can be as much as 6 amps for several minutes after the engine is stopped and 2 amps after that. This is a graph of the 'live data' logged from the OBDeleven at the end of a recent trip:

For information, there is also a graph of the journey start here. Do you know anyone with one of these devices that could look at the battery drain on your car? I appreciate that this is Skoda's responsibility but from my experience very few dealer 'technicians' really understand much beyond what the training manual says. Forewarned is forearmed and all that.

P.S. Some of the other 'glitches' you mentioned in your first post have also happened on my car - Random Parking Sensor activation (annoying), Collision detection with braking (scary) and no accelerator response (even more scary) but the dealer attitude is to ignore them if you can't reproduce them and to remind you that if they do a diagnostic test and don't find anything then it's £130 + VAT thank you very much.

Yes road testing and live data diagnostics is what the Dealership should be doing if they want to sort this but it won't be done at their cost so they'll want money off someone else.

My wife's 2015 Fabi 1.2 TSI, manual, non-KESSY, has clicks, buzzes and whirls with lifting the bonnet, (non-KESSY) key out of ignition lock also all sorts of noises from the engine bay area when the engine is first started, running and about to be switched off (stop/start deactivated) I just take it as the usual VW-not-so-smooth engine bay hardware and the computer programs doing their stuff.

Other owners have put up battery graphs and scan tool program battery information but there can be so many variations, different engines, gearboxes, model of car and years, additional gadgets and toys as extras or customer add-ons so these have to be taken into consideration.

As a generalisation for VW (brands) older than say 2019 I'd put, when the car is parked up, to allow a drop of say 0.2v-0.3v for about 20-45 minutes until most of the computers went to rest, no one seemed to disagree with this so I guess it might be about right, generally.

Intersting for comparision, a 2023 Scala with 1.5 TSI, I assume (always dangerous) the 2025 engine might be the same tho' I'm not sure if either or both might have this cylinder deactivation (so more computer programing wizardry) plus the 2025 is possibly/probably(?) a DSG so more computer prograning and hardware added.

A good idea to monitor battery input and output over a period to see what and when might be occuring and then relate this to what the car was actually doing at these pionts. Particularly perhaps when the car is parked up not used a battery monitor rather than a scan tool may be better for this and bear in mind the scan tool will be dropping voltage with its use.

Unfortuately, in my personal decades of experience with the English motor trade I have found even though I'm certainly not good at mechanics or electrics I've sometimes had to do some of the diagnostics, or other, work for Dealerships, garages and mechanics, even when I've paid them to do some work (or I have to finish off or correct work) as that is the attitude towards their work and customers for many of them for various reasons. Not all of them by any means but far, far, too many of them, very large to very small companies or one-man-bands.

Edited yesterday at 10:031 day by nta16
typos

7 hours ago, nta16 said:

Yes road testing and live data diagnostics is what the Dealership should be doing if they want to sort this but it won't be done at their cost so they'll want money off someone else.

My wife's 2015 Fabi 1.2 TSI, manual, non-KESSY, has clicks, buzzes and whirls with lifting the bonnet, (non-KESSY) key out of ignition lock also all sorts of noises from the engine bay area when the engine is first started, running and about to be switched off (stop/start deactivated) I just take it as the usual VW-not-so-smooth engine bay hardware and the computer programs doing their stuff.

Other owners have put up battery graphs and scan tool program battery information but there can be so many variations, different engines, gearboxes, model of car and years, additional gadgets and toys as extras or customer add-ons so these have to be taken into consideration.

As a generalisation for VW (brands) older than say 2019 I'd put, when the car is parked up, to allow a drop of say 0.2v-0.3v for about 20-45 minutes until most of the computers went to rest, no one seemed to disagree with this so I guess it might be about right, generally.

Intersting for comparision, a 2023 Scala with 1.5 TSI, I assume (always dangerous) the 2025 engine might be the same tho' I'm not sure if either or both might have this cylinder deactivation (so more computer programing wizardry) plus the 2025 is possibly/probably(?) a DSG so more computer prograning and hardware added.

A good idea to monitor battery input and output over a period to see what and when might be occuring and then relate this to what the car was actually doing at these pionts. Particularly perhaps when the car is parked up not used a battery monitor rather than a scan tool may be better for this and bear in mind the scan tool will be dropping voltage with its use.

Unfortuately, in my personal decades of experience with the English motor trade I have found even though I'm certainly not good at mechanics or electrics I've sometimes had to do some of the diagnostics, or other, work for Dealerships, garages and mechanics, even when I've paid them to do some work (or I have to finish off or correct work) as that is the attitude towards their work and customers for many of them for various reasons. Not all of them by any means but far, far, too many of them, very large to very small companies or one-man-bands.

I did think about a battery monitor so might invest in one. I do have an Obdeleven dongle which I have been able to keep an eye on the faults, didn't realise you could monitor the battery with the ignition off so might try that before next Monday when it goes in. I had to wait for a "Specialist" technician to be available, hence the wait.

We did a trip to Wroxham on the Norfolk Broads to visit the in-laws yesterday in the pouring rain. Couple of hours each way and it was awful, the throttle was like a switch, nothing nothing nothing and then full thrust, just what you need on saturated roads. Pulling out into busy traffic was quite scary with no power and then sudden power. My wife commented it was like having a sticky throttle cable back in the day. I have just about had enough as it put us and our boys (dogs) in danger.

Sounds dreadful to drive, you'd expect something like that on an old banger 'back in the day' but not on a new car even back then.

Personally I'm not a fan of a scanner dongle being in the OBD port any longert than necessary and certainly not one of these supposed plug-in that pretends to save fuel. If a wrong 'buton(s)' is 'pressed' or the scanner has a power drop or brain-fart it's connected to the car's computer systems.

From 5 years ago, johnh510's BM2 battery monitor voltage measurement charts as an idea/example. -

https://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/494701-anyone-available-to-code-a-new-agm-battery-in-northampton-please/page/2/#findComment-5553656

https://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/494701-anyone-available-to-code-a-new-agm-battery-in-northampton-please/page/3/#findComment-5554026