Scirocco Central

Own a rocco 2.0 tsi 210, totally standard no remaps etc. Lately the idle has been very erratic bouncing up and down from 800-1200 rpm and also just sticking at 1200-1600 rpm at idle. There's no loss of power once it's going. It's due a service anyway so took it in to an indie vw specialist. After a look over they told me my ECU software is out of date and needs upgrading to the latest version. My question is why do new cars require these updates.?

When a product is released to the market it's never perfect and sometimes issues arise which attention. Sometimes that's a hardware change and in other cases it's a software change. Just like with phone updates.

A case on point is with the diesel models which require a software update due to the well publicised Nox emissions issue.

As above. The manufacturer is constantly making software modifications in order to reduce the chance of known faults occouring or to improve the running of the car.