Sudden jerking or loss of power on highway

I drive a 2012 DSG, stock, with 17" snow tires. I was driving home yesterday afternoon in bad weather (snow) and every few minutes the car kept suddenly losing power for a fraction of a second, then it would kick back in. As if it suddenly slowed down and then sped back up. I was driving at around 60mph, and the problem only happened on the highway. Once I got onto surface roads it was fine. It happened both with and without cruise-control.

It only happened yesterday afternoon. Not yesterday morning, and not today in the morning. Also, no warning lights on the dash, and no funny sounds.

I called the dealer, they said that they would need to replicate it or see a light on the dash. Maybe I was slipping on ice. Is it possible that this was the traction control (or stability control or ASR) kicking in? I didn't see that "anti-skid" light on the dash. Does the car simply de-power when you hit a slippery patch at speed?

did the RPM drop? Did the car actually lost all electrical power and turned back on?

Thanks for the reply.

It didn't lose any electrical power. It just felt as if I had suddenly slowed and then accelerated hard. Or as if I had suddenly downshifted hard, or shifted down and then back up again. I wasn't watching the tachometer. Like I said, the roads were bad so I had to keep an eye on the road.

I was driving in worse conditions last week and I didn't experience this, but I was on surface roads going 40, rather than 60 on the highway.

Had this happen but my car shut off - it ended up being my in tank fuel pump.

i once completly lost power to the car while driving up a hill with low gas, later discovered it was my in-tank fuel pump that was bad, one of the metal rods that levels the sensor was at a 45 deg angle so gas lvl showed more than what was actually in the tank.

So it happened again yesterday. It only seems to happen at highway speed when the weather is bad (windy and snowy).

It's not that the vehicle power shuts off. It feels like the car suddenly goes into neutral and then kicks back into gear, hard. The whole thing takes less than a second. Is it my traction control system?

My car was doing this a couple months ago. Random jerking when I would press the throttle sometimes. No cel but I scanned for faults and there was a MAP sensor code. So I replaced it and it fixed it.

TiCoyote said:

So it happened again yesterday. It only seems to happen at highway speed when the weather is bad (windy and snowy).

It's not that the vehicle power shuts off. It feels like the car suddenly goes into neutral and then kicks back into gear, hard. The whole thing takes less than a second. Is it my traction control system?

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If it was traction control you should see the light flashing on your dashboard.

You could turn off tsc and see if it happens.
Maybe some logging on the highway would show it.

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