A COLLEAGUE recently bought a new VW car and was very pleased with it, until the engine suddenly stopped on a busy main road, with the dashboard showing the cryptic error message “EPC”. An emergency call brought a helpful service engineer, complete with laptop. He plugged it into a socket hidden down near the pedals, then waited while Windows crawled into life and diagnosed the fault.
EPC, it seems, stands for Electronic Pedal Control. Instead of a mechanical linkage between the accelerator pedal and the engine, the car has an electronic sensor that detects the pedal’s position and sends it…
