Hi,

Note: my previous car was a 59-plate Hyundai i30, so all of this is very new to me.

Had my Scala for nearly two weeks now. Happy with it, but have noticed a few gremlins/niggles that I'm not sure about. I have done mostly short urban trips, but recently did an 80 mile motorway drive.

Things I have questions about:

1. The Stop/Start system keeps restarting at random before I depress the clutch or touch anything. Research suggests this is probably because of a low state of charge in the battery, and it does seem better after the motorway drive. Since I'll be doing mostly local trips with the occasional longer journey, is it better to disable this and/or is this something that needs investigating further?

2. The brakes feel as if the ABS is always working; there is a mild pulsing feel from the pedal even with only moderate braking. Is this normal?

3. On the motorway the cruise control worked OK, but on two occasions it behaved oddly; with an indicated steady 60mph the engine seemed to be surging then braking about every second, the effect was pronounced enough that my wife could feel it from the passenger seat. As far as I know the car doesn't have ACC and on the first occasion there was no nearby traffic anyway.

4. Again on the motorway journey, for about 1/2 mile, the tacho display was flashing the gear indicator "6" off and on as though it thought I was dipping the clutch. On two occasions it suggested changing from 6th to 1st, showing "6 > 1" !

5. I haven't used the radio much, but when I have, on at least 50% of the occasions it has randomly changed station itself.

6. The speed warning system only seems to activate when 3+mph over the limit even though it is set to "Standard".

Are any of these known issues, should I be concerned about any of them, and do any require taking the car back to the dealer?

Thanks.

I can help with a couple.

Lots of things cause the engine to restart on it's own if stop start is active. This can include the AC demanding cool air.

The radio mode might be set to local to automatically change to a local station when in range.

There is a margin on the speed warning system. after the first ping then you don't get reminder pings unless you are more than 2-3 mph over the posted limit.

The other stuff will need a trip to the dealer.

Same thoughts as above, I’m guessing that you mean if you press the clutch pedal down while stationary and the engine has auto stopped.

The suggested gear playing up is wrong.

@Aldfort Thanks for the reply. I've had the aircon on a lot recently, I guess that may be part of the problem, although I haven't noticed that the aircon is speeding up - i.e. demanding more power - before the engine restarts.

@rum4mo Yes, if the engine has auto-stopped it starts OK when I depress the clutch (and move the steering wheel? Maybe that was just coincidence...) but it will also re-start seemingly at random without me doing anything, usually after a few seconds. In fact, the last few journeys, the engine has never stopped at all at traffic lights / junctions.

The 6th gear display issue was weird. It has only happened once, but I've only done one motorway journey.

I'll see if anyone else has any ideas, but at the moment I'm inclined to use the car for another week or so to see how things go before taking it back to the dealer. I don't want to be taking it back every five minutes when something odd happens; I'd rather find all the issues and then get them all sorted.

regards,

Andrew

Yes placing a demand on the steering system will also force the engine to restart.

For many many years now, I've bought and fitted a plug in 12V DC voltmeter - Chinese made bought via ebay, having one of them does let you see what is going on wrt the charging voltage, okay these cheap - roughly £5 voltmeters will not be extremely accurate - but in my experience, they are good enough to let you work out things like why the auto stop/start is or is not operational.

The battery life of the original EFB battery depends a lot on how the car has been used over its lifetime, for reference (maybe) my wife's August 2015 VW Polo 1.2TSI never had any issues with its original battery, but I had fallen into the trap of "everyone says that these EFB batteries fail quite quickly" so I bought a new "next size up" Bosch AGM battery really to be ready to swop when the original battery failed at an inconvenient time during the winter. Well that just did not happen, so after storing it and "topping it up" every few months, for a "few" years, I ended up replacing the original Exide EFB with this "one size up" AGM when the car was 10 years old. My older daughter has a May 2019 SEAT Leon Cupra, again it has an Exide EFB and when I last tested it with my CTEK battery tester, it still looks very very healthy - which is okay, I'd doubt if she ever disables auto Stop/Start and only connected it to a CTEK charger during Covid lock down period. My younger daughter has a May 2019 SEAT Arona "bells and whistles" version - they badly under use that car and it bit them in as much as they needed to call the AA out to fit a replacement EFB battery after the original Exide EFB became unuseable - that was maybe 3 winters ago.

Hmmmm ... looks like I've got some research to do on modern batteries!

I'll certainly look into getting a plug-in voltmeter, thanks.

For what it's worth the car was owned by Skoda themselves (at a different dealer from the one I purchased it from I believe) and has only 3,700 miles on the clock. Hopefully the battery hasn't been hammered too much.

Sort urban trips will usually keep the battery charge level at only around or below the SS operating threshold.

Even with longer runs, the smart alternator algorithm will often prevent the battery from attaining a completely full charge - although still allowing SS to operate.

On 12/08/2026 at 07:54, andrewww said:

For what it's worth the car was owned by Skoda themselves (at a different dealer from the one I purchased it from I believe) and has only 3,700 miles on the clock. Hopefully the battery hasn't been hammered too much.

If the car was registered at Northampton, KM-KY prefix, it was a Skoda UK staff car. Their HQ is at Milton Keynes.

Update:

All of the problems have persisted and some new ones have emerged:

• under downhill braking with a full load (three people plus luggage) the whole car was vibrating

• the infotainment system is very buggy, often freezing or generating random characters when entering an address into the SatNav or sometimes activating a different random function when pressing an icon on the menu

• "Stop/Start system error" messages occurring on the dash display

• The Stop/Start often doesn't even attempt to activate (with the crossed-out A icon showing on the dash display)

• Cruise control often surges/brakes (feels like I've changed down to 2nd and briefly got massive engine braking)

• Tacho display showing nonsense gear suggestions, e.g. 6 -> 1

@rum4mo I've bought a 12V plug-in voltmeter. I tested it against a multi-meter on an external power supply and in the car against a multi-meter connected directly to the battery terminals - both times it was within 0.1V, so I know it is accurate. When the car has been sitting for a few hours or overnight, the voltage is ~ 11.7-11.9V and after a journey - even a long motorway run - it is usually ~ 12.3-12.4V. This seems a bit low to me.

The car has been back to the dealer twice now. The second time I discussed all of the issues in detail with the Workshop Controller when booking the car in. The first time they said they had "updated and reset all of the software" and the second time they said they had "done some more software updates".

To be fair, the brakes are a lot better, but the other problems are just the same.

I'm considering my next steps. Should I...

• buy an OBD2 scanner - is this likely to show anything useful?

• take the car to my local garage, where I have had previous vehicles serviced for many years, and get an independent assessment

• go back to the dealer and try to get some redress under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, i.e. a replacement vehicle or a partial refund

• be done with it and sell the car

Anyone got any wisdom to share?

Thanks,

Andrew

Don’t get obsessed with the voltmeter, when you first start up does the voltage raise over 13 volts?:-

A)When you unlock the car and open the door even before you get anywhere turning it on the car will have fired up systems and the fuel pump ready for action which will effectively show a lower voltage.

B)Modern stop / start charging systems are designed to save the odd bit of petrol by turning down charging after a while (On my Superb my voltage sensitive cool box used to shut down!) but overcharging when on the overrun to recoup energy (down hill etc). That’s why you need a better stop/start battery (EFB or AGM etc) as a traditional wet battery would struggle and fail prematurely.

Stop/start errors are common - (eg you’ve only driven short journeys) but could be related to the gear indicator issue mentioned. Only unless your battery is in good fettle, car warmed up etc will stop start work.

RE buggy infotainment system, it’s well documented on this forum that it’s buggy. Might need a firmware update - again well documented.

Re Cruise control, to some extent surging a bit up hill or braking downhill is normal as the car is trying to maintain a constant speed. Sometimes the effect of this can be tweaked in the car settings?

@bigjohn Thanks for the reply.

When first starting, the voltmeter usually shows ~12.8V

The stop/start system often works the first time I stop (engine not up to temperature) and frequently fails to work after that. So that seems to be the opposite of what it should be. It will stop and restart after a few seconds or even stop and immediately restart. Several times when stationary in a queue for a long time it has stopped, restarted after a few seconds, then stopped again after ~30s, then restarted after another few seconds.

The dealer said they had updated the software to the latest versions.

The cruise control surges/brakes on the level. Maybe it thinks it's going downhill...?