What does that TCS light mean?

I spend a lot of time in my car, I do more miles than average and this gives me time to think about things, especially in traffic jams.

Recently I’ve been pondering on the purpose of the Traction Control System (TCS) light on my VWAG car.

I guess then that the following ponderings apply equally to VW, Audi, Skoda, Seat and a few other makes of car.

TCS Development

My guess is that the VWAG group spent many thousands of man-hours at a cost of millions of euros to develop a stability system that knows everything about the dynamics of a car.

TCS knows about braking, cornering, suspension and how to control them to ensure the vehicle remains stable.

Normal Traffic Control

The light is off which means traction control is working fine, or if you manually switch TCS off, the light remains lit. All is OK with the world.

Slippery Surfaces

This is where TCS gets interesting, it will do all it can to compensate for all sorts of skidding and ice driving and it does this very well. Wheels on ice are controlled to avoid wheel spin and so on.

The Light Comes On

From time to time the TCS light comes on or flashes and here’s my view on what it actually means.

It means that all the development time spent by the most intelligent people the car design industry can find, all the money spent on TCS technology and indeed the car itself have  decided that you are now driving in a way that it was not able to predict and worse can’t cope with.

What the TCS light actually means is….

“This is too hard for me, over to you, good luck”