[drfood]

Definition of car - “A car is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transportation. “

Main word - Transportation ( Move people around). If it leaves you stranded on road, it is failing to fulfill its most basic function.

No matter how big a fan boy one, how great car is, this should not be acceptable at all. Niggles are ok but stranding on road should not be considered a niggle.

Skoda is taking Indian customers for a ride and dismal regulations means they are getting away with it. Atleast we as paying customers should do something about it. Probably not buy it till it’s safe and error free, existing owners could come together and try to do something legally and May be even more noise on social media.

P.S. I own a Skoda and love it.

[sidharthg]

I'm surprised that why aren't these problems caught during testing of these cars ?apparently these cars are tested for more than a million miles.

It is strange that these problems do not occur during that time or are simply ignored. Same with DPF issue in higher altitude, there are news going about the high failure rate in places like leh due to lack of oxygen .

[WindRide]

Originally Posted by sidharthg

I'm surprised that why aren't these problems caught during testing of these cars

"Time-to-market" pressure. An affliction endemic in ultra-competitive do-or-die segments, which routinely adopts a "release-now-fix-later" approach.

This seems to have back-fired spectacularly in this case.

[Deepak Ramani]

I have a Skoda Kushaq 1.5 MT Style variant and I have driven around 550 kms on HP normal petrol without any EPC issues popping up till date. But I was going through the user manual once again today and noticed this:


This is shocking, on many levels. Skoda sales never informed me about this mandate to use 95 RON, even though I specifically asked PPS Skoda sale representative if there is any such recommendation from Skoda.

[Hayek]

Originally Posted by sidharthg

I'm surprised that why aren't these problems caught during testing of these cars ?apparently these cars are tested for more than a million miles.

What you forget is a million miles is nothing compared to the distances and conditions that a car encounters when it enters mass production. Between July and September, nearly 7000 Kushaqs have been sold. Assuming an average distance driven of 1000 km per month, and 1.5 months average life, Kushaqs have driven 10.5 mm kms in this time, more than 6x the million miles you referred to (and I think it is more likely a million kms of testing). Assuming 200 Kushaqs (to take a high estimate) have faced problems, they would have covered 300,000 kms in this period - so you have 10.2 mm driven by cars which have not faced a problem. Not very surprising why errors are not caught. And this is before the possibility of the design being ok, but the problem lying with quality control, either at a vendor or in final scale assembly.

Even with iOS, I never upgrade to a newer version on the first release. If you are risk averse or inconvenience intolerant, wait and buy a bedded in product.

[Rahul9229]

EPC fiasco is far from over as more reports of cars breaking down with updated epc pumps . It's a shame skoda and Zac still blame fuel quality and other issues where problem is with their own car and manufacturing/troubleshooting capability.

[poloman]

One month down the line Skoda EPC issue is fast becoming a case study for automobile industry how not to manage a critical issue on launch. I still hold my earlier opinion that cars like any machines are prone to issues and customers should be patient.

Skoda has gone wrong now on many fronts

• No proper root cause of the issue even after two months
• Hurrying up solutions like fuel pump replacement with out proper root cause and debug
• MD managing issues in twitter. Issues get amplified and bad press follows.

[CrAzY dRiVeR]

Originally Posted by Rahul9229

EPC fiasco is far from over as more reports of cars breaking down with updated epc pumps.

Not at all - here is another one on a flatbed from today.


Source

Looks like the "robust" fuel pumps only wasted time towards the investigation of an actual resolution.

[ajmat]

Originally Posted by CrAzY dRiVeR

Not at all - here is another one on a flatbed from

Looks like the "robust" fuel pumps only wasted time towards the investigation of an actual resolution.

And what is that exact resolution?

[Akshay6988]

Originally Posted by CrAzY dRiVeR

Not at all - here is another one on a flatbed from today.

Looks like the "robust" fuel pumps only wasted time towards the investigation of an actual resolution.

I happened to glance through this particular group of Kushaq owners and was shocked to see Zac Hollis getting tagged in every post, comments and replies ! Did Skoda hire a team of social media managers to handle Zac's account For other brands the chain of escalation goes usually from dealer management to regional management of a particular brand. Nothing more than that and the issue gets resolved one way or another. Whereas for Skoda, you can mention your issue to the CEO, and then your issue gets resolved
Coming to the point, I also suspect issue is something else totally and Skoda is just buying time by saying foolish things about fuel quality and "robust" pump.

[Deepak Ramani]

Originally Posted by Akshay6988

I happened to glance through this particular group of Kushaq owners and was shocked to see Zac Hollis getting tagged in every post, comments and replies ! Did Skoda hire a team of social media managers to handle Zac's account For other brands the chain of escalation goes usually from dealer management to regional management of a particular brand. Nothing more than that and the issue gets resolved one way or another. Whereas for Skoda, you can mention your issue to the CEO, and then your issue gets resolved
Coming to the point, I also suspect issue is something else totally and Skoda is just buying time by saying foolish things about fuel quality and "robust" pump.

Exactly my current quandary..... they have called me to visit the service center and get the fuel pump replaced. And my car is performing brilliantly well. So I am really concerned if replacing the fuel pump should not cause some issue to pop up

[John]

Originally Posted by Akshay6988

Coming to the point, I also suspect issue is something else totally and Skoda is just buying time by saying foolish things about fuel quality and "robust" pump.

As I mentioned in my post a few days ago, I strongly feel that this is an electronics issue. Not sure, but it could be that the ECU on these models is different from the units on the Polo/Vento/Rapid.
As you have also mentioned, blaming the fuel/fuel pump is just a ploy to buy time, while they are scrambling to find the real problem.

[JojyKerala]

The friendly SA at Skoda says that the fuel pump wasn't the sole reason for the EPC issue. The diagnosis varies from vehicle to vehicle and has been attributed to an electric harness and winder motor as well.

Zac is right when he mentions that the new fuel pumps are trustworthy. What he doesn't mention is that the service team should have looked at other minor niggles as well instead of just replacing the fuel pump.

[Deepak Ramani]

Got the fuel pump of my Kushaq 1.5 MT Style replaced yesterday because of the recall. Somehow, get the feeling the engine sound is different after the fuel pump replacement. Still smooth and quick..but sounds a wee bit different. Has any one else noticed this?

[volkman10]

New theories now being floated by Zac on the Kushaq breakdowns: