Travel Assist / Emergency Assist error

[Cupra306Form]

Anyone suffering from the repeated "Emergency" or "Travel" assist errors that are steering wheel related that Cupra / VW / Audi / Seat and Skoda suffer from whose dealer is unable to help I visited East Yorkshire Retrofits who found the fault, showed me what was causing it and fixed it in about 20 minutes. It's not a cheap fix, you have to buy a new part, but it was done quickly and after a long drive home and 2 more trips tonight so far so good. There is also an unintended positive consequence of the fix in the way the car can be driven that is probably best not highlighted on a public forum.

I had noticed sometimes the fault went away, but I hadn't realised it was after using the heated steering wheel that helped. As a temporary fix anyone suffering - and that is the right word - from this fault stick the wheel heat at level 3 for 10-15 minutes to get it really hot and it should stop the faults for a while. (Tip from East Yorkshire Retrofits)

Cupra Liverpool have had 3 goes at fixing this and had basically given up saying awaiting a fix from Cupra.

I forgot to say thanks to @East Yorkshire Retrofits by putting the @ there

 

[Syphon]

Credit for @East Yorkshire Retrofits for the fix. I get the odd error, but didn't know it was steering wheel related. I more often get check rear light warnings, stop and start the car again and it goes away.

 

[Tell]

Wonder where the heating comes into it ?. Duff connections ? Or dampsness ?. Altea use to suffer from cruise control issues like it didn't work. That was dirty contacts in the switch stalk but I wasnt brave enough to take it apart and clean it. Instructions on the board at the time. Really you'd expect these issues to be picked up and sorted out before the car is built as part of testing the design.

 

[Cupra306Form]

Wonder where the heating comes into it ?. Duff connections ? Or dampsness ?. Altea use to suffer from cruise control issues like it didn't work. That was dirty contacts in the switch stalk but I wasnt brave enough to take it apart and clean it. Instructions on the board at the time. Really you'd expect these issues to be picked up and sorted out before the car is built as part of testing the design.

My thoughts are that if heat fixes it it's probably moisture, sweat from the hands getting through the pores in steering wheel leather affecting the measurements taken about hand contacts? Although I suppose any leather cleaner used on the wheel might also be a factor, I have cleaned mine occasionally. I had my heated wheel on the day before my trip to get it fixed and never got a single beep, on the day I travelled over 60 miles before I got one, it had been either sounding or showing unavailable pretty much constantly before that, often from start up before I touched the wheel.

A quick look at VW forums shows some golf owners have had 3 new steering wheels under warrantee - what a joke.

 

[Tell]

Leon 4 people like to change their steering wheels and some on recent Ateca's, why. I haven't got down to the bottom of that one. Probably moisture and all those touch sensitive controls that people dont like playing havoc with the electronics.

 

[SRGTD]

Leon 4 people like to change their steering wheels and some on recent Ateca's, why. I haven't got down to the bottom of that one. Probably moisture and all those touch sensitive controls that people dont like playing havoc with the electronics.

Changing the steering wheel was VW’s solution to this issue but a new steering wheel didn’t always fix the issue or if it did, the fix was sometimes only temporary; as @Cupra306Form has said, some owners had multiple replacement steering wheels; must have cost VW a small fortune in warranty claims.

Interesting that VW reverted back to conventional physical buttons on steering wheels for most models, although strangely, touch sensitive controls have been retained for the mk8.5 Golf R. I can’t recall reading of owners of any current / latest VW’s with conventional steering wheel buttons having the travel assist issues that were experienced in cars with the haptic touch sensitive controls.

 

[Tell]

Well with a car bouncing around trying to get a touch rather than a click is going to be a bit haphazard whilst driving. You'd think they would boil a kettle under them to test them for humidity . Going through multiple screen isnt something you want to do driving.

Brother use to work at the Vauxhall proving ground where they would drive and drive cars, crash and crash them till they got it right. Strip down the competitors cars to see how they were engineered. Been round the bowl at 100mph... a family perk . Brother use to bounce the cars over MKs old humpback bridges with test equipment on the suspension. How does this car bounce.

Just in time is when it all went wrong for Vag, putting aside diesel-gate. Mib3 the grand plan to software update them on the road. Cut down testing to save money.

Managers not understanding tech but on diesel-gate, that America is hot on car emissions for 50+ years. Obviously American emissions people would say, how can they do this with this arrangement... they found out. They tried to stop Concorde flying into America on emissions. That smokey old engine. Probably VAG staff are too young to know. ~50 years later they rumbled Vag trying to do the same. Managers not understanding software development was the new one.

Anyhow we have that new control system coming along for EVs... we will see whether it's money well spent.

 

[James_R]

The issue on VW vehicles is caused by a defective touch sensor that's fitted within the steering wheel.

It relies on on the likes of heat and pressure from your hands to determine if you have hold of the wheel or not. If it can't detect your hands then the car will turn off the assist systems.

Turning the heated function on will override the system all allow you to use the assist functions again.

Steering wheels on VW and steering wheel control modules on Seat/Cupra have cured the issue on vehicles I've dealt with. They currently tend to last about 18 months before the issues start to arise again.

In a lot of people's opinion, the haptic touch buttons are a massive own-goal by VWG. The novelty wears off almost immediately.

 

[Bahnstormer_vRS]

^^^^ I'll watch out for this, or is it unlikely that my '25 Ateca VZ will be affected? - different steering wheel / touch controls to @Cupra306Form 's Formentor perhaps.

Guy

Sent from my Galaxy S25 Ultra using Tapatalk

 

[Tell]

One for James I dont use travel assist on my 2017 Ateca model it might have stopped working already. No haptic buttons on that but it does have a feature to determine whether you got your hands on the wheel. But since I rejected lane assist and traffic assist two months or so since I had it, I'm blissfully unaware. These days they force you to use lane assist so if that sensor failed you'd get a light show I guess.