eCall will contact emergency services in the event of an accident-but it has caused problems for some drivers

Volkswagen, Audi and Skoda Group are accused of deliberately selling cars with defective SOS warning systems, which in some cases fail before the new owner leaves the dealership.

Since 2018, all new cars sold in the European Union must be equipped with an eCall system, which will automatically contact the emergency services and learn the location of the vehicle in the event of a serious accident. This is a complex setup using car navigation system and airbag sensors, and it has its own mobile phone sim card.

But almost after the VAG Group introduced the SOS system in its cars in 2017, buyers of Volkswagen, Skoda and Audi began to report intermittent problems.

The Guardian’s research shows that the problem has not been solved by the manufacturer. Nearly three years have passed and the problem has not been solved yet.

Frustrated car owners describe that they have to return to the dealership many times, often without results, which wastes their time and fuel, and sometimes without a car for weeks.

In the most recent case, some drivers reported that their car’s satellite navigation and car phone systems had failed. At least one owner of the affected car has been informed that these issues have affected a large number of cars produced in 2020.

In May of last year, Volkswagen was forced to suspend the delivery of its latest golf model due to the failure of the eCall emergency assistance function to work reliably. In April 2020, Skoda recalled and repaired 26,000 Kamiq and Scala models after discovering that the system was not working properly.

Flora Ellison, a teacher living in South London, said that her dealer told her that he “doesn’t know” how to repair her Skoda Karoq sport utility vehicle, which she bought from the brand. Only four days later it started playing-a new car worth £22,000 was launched in December.

She said: "You may drive around, the warning lights will flash, tell you that the SOS system is malfunctioning, and tell you to drive the car to the dealer." "The car's satellite navigation system is malfunctioning. Use the hands-free phone system. At that time, you will never hear the other party’s voice anymore."

Despite visiting dealers many times, she said that the problem has not been resolved. She said the staff eventually admitted to her that this was a well-known malfunction, so she asked the dealer to replace her car.

"I am now being told that this problem has affected many vehicles in the fleet-and they don't know how to solve it," she said.

"I rely on the car to get to work because public transportation options are very limited. When I first drove in, they gave the impression that they had never seen this problem before. Only by persisting would the truth surface. In my opinion, Skoda deliberately sells a car with this breakdown. I really like every other aspect of this car, which makes the whole thing even more frustrating."

As early as 2017, Audi car owners took the lead in reporting the problem. Since then, there have been a steady stream of complaints from VAG car buyers, and online posts about Volkswagen, Audi and Skoda have been published.

“My new Q7 had the same problem less than 12 hours after it was picked up from the dealership in mid-January 2017,” Yisi wrote on the Audi forum in 2017. antenna. Unfortunately, the problem came back a few days later and I had to send it back to the dealer again. I have a feeling that Audi does not know what caused the emergency call error. "

Skoda owners described the same experience, followed by Volkswagen Golf buyers-again often reporting that they started within a few days of picking up a new car at the dealership.

In November last year, a small number of Volkswagen T-Roc owners complained about this problem, and some of them only owned cars for two weeks. It also affected the owners of Caravelle and at least one owner of a Volkswagen ID3 electric car.

Guardian Money sent the link to these complaints to Skoda. It said that without knowing the details of each case or the cause of the Ellison's failure, "commenting or making comparisons is not constructive or helpful." It is now checking her car and gave her a replacement.

The parent company Volkswagen declined to comment.

One of the problems that dealers apparently encountered was diagnosing faults. In some early cases, there was a problem with the SIM card, and the software update seems to have resolved some of the problems. Recently, the owner needed a new replacement control unit, which in some cases took two months to repair.

Lisa Barber of Which Consumer Group? Said: "These reports of manufacturing failures of certain VAG models are worrying. If the manufacturer is aware of these failures, it is completely unacceptable to continue to collect cash from consumers without solving the problem. It must investigate all of them. These complaints within the scope of the car, and when needed, a recall notice will be issued to ensure that these faults are repaired."

A Skoda spokesperson said: “We can only comment on Skoda, but it’s worth noting that [complained in the forum] cars mainly involve cars based on different platform architectures and using different software and hardware. The customer experience is for us. It’s vital. Our focus now is to investigate issues related to our customers’ cars and make sure we resolve the case.”