Volkswagen Taigun Breaks Down On Holiday: What Could Be The Reason
A Volkswagen Taigun owner recently had a horrible experience with the SUV and soon took to social media detailing the same. The post he shared on X, previously Twitter, is now going viral. Kunal Agarwal, a resident of Jaipur, says that his Taigun GT’s engine ‘died’ on the Mandi-Manali mountain highway. His elderly parents were also there in the car. Agarwal had a poor experience with the Roadside Assistance and even claims that the breakdown was caused by the use of E20 petrol!
The breakdown happened on June 8, when Agarwal was on a family holiday. In the post, he says that the car’s engine shut down at around 2:30 pm on a mountain highway. The family, including his parents who are in their sixties, was left stranded in 37-degree heat. Even after trying several times, the car refused to start. It kept returning an EPC error sign.
Agarwal tried reaching Volkswagen’s RSA (roadside assistance). He says he was given ‘ we'll call you back sir’ in answer, but the call-back never happened. No tow-truck was sent to him. He finally hired a local truck himself and towed the SUV to Volkswagen’s service centre in Mandi.
The post then makes some serious allegations. The technicians at Volkswagen’s service centre, it says, cited the use of E20 fuel as the root cause of this breakdown. Agarwal sees the Taigun’s reported inability to handle E20 petrol a recall-worthy defect and says that all owners should now be worried.
The post also mentions that the SUV’s fuse box had caught fire. Explaining this, the technicians said "You tried to start your car too many times." Agarwal calls it an electrical design failure. He also added that the dealership bypassed the fuse box and called it a fix! This owner is extremely unhappy with the experience he had at the service centre. He says that this particular service centre doesn’t take any accountability. Agarwal is now preparing to take the legal route and file a suit at the consumer court.
Firstly, what is an EPC error? EPC expands to ‘Electronic Power Control’. EPC error indicates that the car’s Engine Control Unit (ECU) has detected a malfunction in its drive-by-wire system. The Taigun uses drive-by-wire- electronics and sensors instead of physical cables to manage throttle, fuel injection, and engine timing. The vehicle in this case is the Taigun GT. It comes with a 1.5L turbo-petrol engine that has cylinder de-activation technology. It, in fact, relies more on such electronics than the 1.0L engine.
Usually, when EPC errors occur, the car enters the ‘Limp home mode’. Engine power drops, acceleration gets restricted, and the turbocharger gets deactivated. In this case, however, the owner says the engine shut down completely. That means the issue here was severe. The shut-down here was the engine’s effort to prevent catastrophic mechanical failure.
The golden rule in cases of total shutdown is to not attempt a force-restart. Do not keep grinding the starter motor. The owner in this case, did not follow this rule and ended up burning the fuse box.
From what we have heard from the Taigun GT community and various Volkswagen documents, EPC errors leading to complete engine shutdown can have three primary causes- a complete failure of high-pressure fuel pump or injector, electronic throttle body jam, and crankshaft position sensor failure.
The 1.5L TSI engine uses high fuel pressure (up to 350 bar) to feed its direct injectors. This is essential for the ultra-fine atomisation- critical for its efficient combustion, lower emissions and strong performance.
The use of E20 petrol can possibly create a major issue here. The injectors can potentially get clogged by E20 fuel. This can lead to a complete stall. This is one of the most heavily documented reasons for complete breakdowns, by Taigun owners. In such cases, the driver experiences a fuel pressure loss a few seconds before the engine dies. The EPC light will also appear at around the same time.
The second possible cause is any sudden internal electrical short inside the electronic throttle actuator or a possible jamming of the butterfly valve. Air cannot enter the engine in such cases and the ECU will cut off all ignition and fuel, to prevent an uncontrolled engine runaway. This too will stall the car.
The third reason is a complete failure of the Crankshaft Position Sensor (CPS). This sensor tracks the exact rotational speed and position of the crankshaft. The ECU would immediately shut the engine if this sensor is damaged.
A complete root cause analysis would be required to ascertain which of these caused the Taigun GT to stall in this case.
This is not the first time that we have come across such incidents from within the Volkswagen owners community. In the comments section of Agarwal’s post, we can see some owners sharing similar experiences.
Sunderdeep of Volklub had also reported EPC errors on his Volkswagen T-Roc, despite maintaining it in a near-perfect way. In his case, the car was running fine and did not get into the limp home mode or a total shut down. More examples can be seen on forums like Team BHP. Clearly, this is not a one-off case.