I wish Škoda UK Customer Support lived up to the brand’s “Simply Clever” catchphrase but in my experience sadly not.

I’ve mentioned before in this forum that I’ve been having problems with media playback from a usb stick. After many months of gritting my teeth and trying to live with it I decided to have one last attempt at finding a solution myself by checking that the folder and file structure I use on the usb stick complies with any limitations of the infotainment system. The manual only gives information of what type of media files are supported but nothing about any limitations on file size, folder size, max files in a folder, max files on the stick etc. etc.

I emailed customer support saying that I have been experiencing problems with the infotainment system and so that I can check that I’m not exceeding any limitations could they please supply me with information regarding the items I mentioned above.

Their reply was “we are sorry that you are experiencing problems with your infotainment system, please speak with your Skoda retailer to arrange for a diagnostic check of your system”.

Considering too a recent experience in the Superb when it suddenly performed an emergency stop while travelling at 70mph in the middle lane of the M20 with no apparent reason it’s the last straw for me. I’m getting rid of the Superb and going elsewhere.

I’ve had a number of test drives over the last week, the 2026 Honda Civic eHEV is top of my list. Not as luxurious or as spacious as the Superb and lacks some of the toys but boy what a fantastic drive! It’s a long time since I’ve driven a car that handles so well. The sort of car I’d find excuses for going out in rather than reasons for not going out in the Superb because of my frustrations with it. On my 40min test drive the trip meter said the car achieved 62mpg, Bose sound system beat the Canton hands down and the top trim comes in at a tad under £40k so no luxury car tax.

As the song goes, “so long, farewell, it’s time for me to go…”

I completely agree, we have experienced the extremely dangerous braking problem twice and now always turn it off.

I raised several complaints with Skoda UK, including the above; the rest relate to the customer service at the branch I purchased from, and I have had generic responses to all. I imagine that a neutral answer avoids any potential liability, but it also avoids actually addressing the problem. At some point, some road users are going to get seriously injured (or worse) under an emergency braking scenario, and I very much doubt my "Customer Relations Manager" will be able to use generics at a formal inquest.

Luckily, my local branch, Trancity, is very customer-focused and have just serviced the car and resolved a few problems. But they did say the braking scenarios are as expected from the position of the sensors. Like you, I would have hoped Skoda UK would be collating customer reports for researching and eventually releasing a software improvement or update?

I would look closely at the reliability of the Honda; not so sure it is what it was in the pre-electric days?

Another contender for me has been Toyota, 'dull but dependable", if they release a plug-in Corolla estate, I personally would seriously consider that instead. They also have the extended warranty periods for the car, 10 years and 15 on the hybrid system (if you service it annually with Toyota).

Toyota GB

Toyota Warranty | Toyota Car Warranty | Toyota UK

At Toyota, we take great pride in the quality and reliability of our vehicles. Discover Toyota Relax - up to 10 years (100,000 miles) Toyota warranty.

@Rifleman . I have had almost a year of waiting for delivery of our Superb (she is called Rosie) and almost another year of research. As a result, my AI Assistant is well versed in all matters 'Skoda Superb' and has been trained, through memory updates, to be objective, thorough, evidence based, disagree, challenge and always tell me what I need to know, not what I want to hear. It sometimes slips up but has been getting progressively better over time.

Here is the answer to your questions about the Superb's sound system which I shared with it earlier. I hope it helps. As an aside, I suspect Skoda UK Customer Services are little different from any of the other manufacturers and I also doubt the dealership wouldhave any deep knowledge unless you stumbled across an atypical employee.

Yes — and the answer is considerably less restrictive than the older Škoda systems made us fear.

For Rosie’s current-generation infotainment, I would set the PNY up as follows:

USB filesystem: exFAT. That is the safest choice. Škoda itself specifies exFAT for modern USB media used with its current infotainment systems, including 64 GB+ media. �

updateportal.skoda-auto.com

Partitioning: one normal partition. There is no advantage in dividing the stick into several partitions.

Audio format: FLAC is natively supported by this generation of VW Group infotainment; there is no need to convert your lossless library to MP3. Current-generation VW infotainment documentation also lists FLAC among the supported audio types. �

My Car User Manual

Folder structure: nothing exotic is required. I would use the very conventional

Artist → Album → 01 Track.flac

→ 02 Track.flac

etc. The infotainment can browse the actual USB folder structure as well as building its own artist/album/track database from the embedded metadata. �

Volkswagen Ireland +1

Stick capacity: your 256 GB PNY is absolutely fine. Importantly, actual Mk4 Superb owners have successfully used 256 GB and 1 TB drives, with one owner specifically reporting both a 1 TB and 256 GB drive being read without difficulty. �

Briskoda

Library size: I cannot find a Škoda-published hard maximum for the Mk4 Superb such as “x folders/xx,xxx tracks”, so I would not quote an invented limit on Briskoda. The empirical evidence that 1 TB devices work is far more useful. Very large libraries can simply take longer to index initially; that has been reported on contemporary VW Group systems with 10,000+ tracks. �

Briskoda

There is one important distinction here. The 256 GB size of the stick and the size of an individual FLAC file are not problems when using exFAT. FAT32 has the old 4 GB-per-file restriction; exFAT removes that. No normal music FLAC would approach 4 GB anyway.

What I would actually do with ours

I would format the PNY exFAT, probably with Windows' default allocation-unit setting, give it a sensible volume name such as ROSIE MUSIC, and copy the library across in this form:

ROSIE MUSIC

│

├── ABBA

│ ├── Arrival

│ │ ├── 01 When I Kissed The Teacher.flac

│ │ ├── 02 Dancing Queen.flac

│ │ └── ...

│ └── The Visitors

│

├── Beethoven

│ ├── Symphony No. 5

│ └── Symphony No. 9

│

├── Fleetwood Mac

│ └── Rumours

│

└── ...

More important than the folder names is having good FLAC tags — Artist, Album, Track Number, Title, Disc Number and preferably embedded album artwork. The infotainment's media database will then give you a much more civilised Artist/Album browsing experience rather than making you work through folders.

And this confirms something from our old discussion: the PNY 256 GB stick was a sound purchase. In fact, it is rather nicely judged — enough capacity for a very substantial lossless collection without going to the rather absurd 1 TB extreme that the system apparently will nevertheless tolerate. �

Briskoda

If you show me the exact wording of the owner's question in the attachment, I can also tell you whether there is any wrinkle in it that I haven't covered above

Best wishes, David.

Edited 6 hours ago6 hr by Arianne

Thanks for your very comprehensive reply Arianne.

I use exactly the format and folder structure you describe above on a Samsung 256GB usb-c stick. Also tried with other makes of sticks and a 1TB external ssd.

Well that was my last shot at fixing my media playback woes. I’m in the process of ordering the Honda Civic eHEV in Advanced trim. I love it’s driving characteristics, fuel economy and ergonomic control layout. It comes with an 8 year guarantee too. Not as luxurious as the Superb but I can live with that, I came back from my test drive with a huge smile on my face!