Mike789

Thanks Tech, but I always put my belt on straight away when I get into the car so this isn't a cause of the problems, and my door is closed. I think its probably just being new to the car and am not giving enough revs. This is probably more so pulling off my drive as its actually slightly downhill to the road so I may be building less revs than I would be otherwise. I'll keep an eye on it and see if its just simply down to my driving style and getting used to a new system over the new few weeks. Coincidentally, I borrowed a new B-Class Merc a couple of times recently with a similar electro-mechanical brake, but this seems to operate differently. After you'd come to a stop with the foot brake, it then held until you pulled away. I don't know what the time limit was for pulling away and I don't know if it had a hill-assist system option fitted. This was good when you got used to it but what I really didn't like was that they'd put the manual parking brake switch in the dashboard hidden behind the steering wheel and on the right hand side. This was hard to find (although I realise you'd get used to it). At least the Audi one is in a position where you'd expect it to be.

OK thanks for that Tech, sounds like I need to try a few things out with it. I havent actually needed to pull off in reverse up a hill yet, but the reason I mentioned the reverse thing is that I definitely have had a couple of occasions where it failed to release and the car was raising itself up against the parking brake. On both occasions this was trying to reverse off my drive which is actually slightly downhill towards the road. It was only on the second occasion I spotted the warning on the dashboard telling me to depress the footbrake before I could manually take off the parking brake. My wife fell foul of it too the first time she tried to use my car (much to my amusement) with me trying to jesticulate to go forwards first. She got there in the end but more by trial and error. I will try a bit more throttle then and see if that does the trick, and if not I might even mention it to my dealer in case there's a slight fault with it. It's not causing me an issue though and like I said before, its otherwise a great car.

I have a new 2013 spec A3 fitted with the electromechanical parking brake, i.e. there's an electrical switch to apply the parking brake and also to disinguage it. I do not have the hill-assist system fitted. This is an optional extra. So to apply the parking brake I pull up the switch and when I'm pulling away forwards it seems to disinguage itself with no further action from me. I find however that if I'm pulling off in reverse it doesn't disinguage itself. I have found I can get it to disinguage by lifting my clutch a little and effectively rocking the car which seems to disinguage it. You can force it to disinguage by pushing the switch however in order for this to happen you need to depress the footbrake. So here's the problem: If you're trying to pull off in reverse up a hill, you need your foot on the footbrake in order to release the parking brake. So you can't be applying a few revs and using the clutch because your foot is on the brake pedal (unless you employ some fancy footwork). This seems a bit of an error to me in the application of the parking brake system fitted to the car. You can purchase the hill assist system but this is a cost option and obviously you needed to have had selected it on purchase. If its needed in order to be able to pull off on a hill then it should have been a standard fitment. It was much easier with a manual handbrake, you could apply as much pressure as you wanted as and when you wanted it. With this new electrically controlled system, its either on or off. Bit of a drop off on an otherwise great car!

I can add something to the dpf topic but fear it should perhaps be shifted to a different conversations. I have owned a brand new 2013 A3 1.6TDi since 1st September and am finding this a little odd: About once a week, when I finish my journey I notice that the cooling fan (in the front of the engine bay) is running away crazily and accompanying this is a slight burning smell. The fan carries on for a randon time, I think its 5/10 mins or so. I have looked this up on another forum and its suggested that it is the dpf regeneration being interrupted and nothing to worry about. I do intend checking this out with my dealer when I get chance though. My journeys to and from work are approximately 15/20 minutes and nearly all of the journey is on a dual carriageway at approx 60-70 mph. So it does make sense that my journey time is a little low to go through the whole regen cycle. I did find a useful video explanation of the operation of the dpf system on the audi.co.uk website.

My previous car was an Audi A1 1.4 FTSi and I've just changed to an A3 1.6 TDi and if I were doing 15k miles a year I would definitely go for the diesel. I've done less than 1000 miles in the A3 and already I'm regularly seeing average fuel consumption of over 60mpg where as on the A1 (petrol) I used to get approx 37/38 mpg and very rarely over 40. Although the same journeys, I'm still "running in" the A3 so I'm probably driving it more cautiously at the moment. I am not finding the A3 diesel noisy. My wife has an A1 diesel and thats definitely louder than my A3. I guess the sound deadening is better on the A3. Also, I know I haven't been putting my foot down in the A3 diesel but it seems lively enough so far. I'm well impressed.