Peugeot 3008 Warning Lights and Symbols: What Each One Means, and Why the i-Cockpit Screen Changes Where You Look

A 3008’s dashboard is a screen, not a set of dials

Colour is the fastest read on any dashboard: red means find somewhere safe and stop, amber means a stored fault wanting attention rather than panic, and green or blue only confirm that something is switched on. Our guide to what a dashboard warning light is actually telling you sets out that grammar, and how a Peugeot tells you something is wrong covers the marque’s message centre, its service spanner and its diesel lamps.

What is different on a 3008 is where the warning appears. From the second-generation car of 2016 the instrument panel is Peugeot’s i-Cockpit: a display set high on the dash, above a small steering wheel you look over rather than through. Peugeot’s own description of the newest panel calls its central area personalisable — the driver chooses whether it shows dials, a digital speed readout, driving aids, trip computer information or, on the electric car, power flow and charge state.

That changes the behaviour of warning lights in three ways.

• A lamp can be in a view you are not showing. The central area changes with the selected view, so a symbol illustrated in one place in the handbook is not always drawn there on your car. A warning that seems to have gone may only be out of sight.
• Two 3008s can present the same fault differently. Trim, options and the view the last driver left it in all change what you see, which makes comparing your dashboard against somebody else’s photograph far less reliable than it is on a car with fixed lamps.
• The screen itself can be the fault. A digital panel does not fail the way a needle cluster fails. It dims, blanks, ghosts, restarts over a bump, or — the difficult one — keeps displaying information that looks entirely plausible and is wrong.

None of that softens the safety rules. A red lamp on a 3008 means what it means on any other car: stop as soon as it is safe. What the screen reading buys you is the second question — not only what the symbol means, but whether the thing showing it to you is reliable.

Peugeot 3008 warning lights and symbols: the full reference table

Filtered to the lamps a 3008 carries, so every row is one you might actually see. Where Peugeot delivers a warning as a written message rather than a symbol, the row keeps the words and gets no icon — there is no standard glyph to show you. The safe-to-drive column takes the serious reading wherever a fault could reasonably be trivial or serious.

Colour	Symbol	What it means on a 3008	Is it safe to drive?
Red	STOP — the word STOP in a red circle	Peugeot’s severity lamp. It names no fault of its own — it arrives with another warning and a message.	No. Stop as soon as it is safe, switch off, and read the message.
Red	Brake system — an exclamation mark in a bracketed circle	Parking brake still applied, brake fluid below minimum, or a stored fault in the braking system.	No, unless it goes out the moment the parking brake is fully released. Fluid that is genuinely low has gone somewhere.
Red	Brake system and ABS lit together	Both braking warnings at once. The hydraulic unit they share also balances braking effort front to rear.	No. Brake gently, stop as soon as it is safe, and have the car recovered rather than driven on.
Red	Oil pressure — an oil can with a drip	Oil pressure has fallen. This is the pressure warning, not the amber low-level one below.	No. Switch the engine off. Bearings are damaged in seconds without oil pressure, not in miles.
Red	Coolant temperature — a thermometer in wavy lines	The engine is running too hot: coolant low or not circulating, or a failed thermostat, pump or fan.	No. Stop, switch off and let it cool. Never open a hot expansion tank.
Red	Battery charging — a battery with plus and minus terminals	The battery is no longer being replenished: alternator, belt, a connection or wiring. Falling voltage brings other warnings with it.	Only as far as somewhere safe. Where the car stops is not your choice.
Red	Airbags and belt tensioners — a seated figure facing an inflated circle	The restraint system has a stored fault. An airbag or a pretensioner may not fire in a collision.	It drives normally, but the protection is not there. Have it read now, and never work on the system yourself.
Red and amber	Power steering — a steering wheel with an exclamation mark	Assistance is electric, so there is no fluid to check. Amber is reduced assistance or a stored fault; red is assistance lost.	Red, no — it can go without warning and the wheel turns very heavy. Amber, with care, and get it read.
Red	Seat belt, and a door, bonnet or boot ajar	A belt is unfastened or a closure is not latched. The boot and the bonnet catch are the usual culprits.	Stop and put it right. A warning that persists with everything shut is a switch or its wiring.
Red	Anti-theft and immobiliser — a car outline with a key	The key has not been recognised, or the system has a fault. Peugeot words this condition as starting being prevented.	If it has started, yes for now. If it fires and dies, try the spare key before anything else.
Amber	Engine management — the outline of an engine block	Steady: a stored engine fault, usually with a message naming a category rather than a part. Flashing: a fault that can damage the catalyst.	Steady and driving normally, gently, and read the codes within days. Flashing, or power down: stop.
Amber	“Anti Pollution Fault” — a written message, with no symbol of its own	An emissions-related fault covering several systems and naming no part. Its own section is below.	Briefly, if it is driving normally — but it is a fault with a clock on it. Misfiring or down on power: stop.
Amber	Service — a plain spanner	Two jobs: a service interval counting down, and a stored fault. Peugeot’s lamp table for the newest 3008 lists it as indicating a system fault.	Yes for a countdown. Arriving with a message or another lamp, treat it as a fault rather than a reminder.
Amber	Diesel particulate filter — a filter box with a row of dots	Soot has built up and a regeneration has not completed. Short, cold, stop-start journeys are what prevent one.	Yes on its own, and a sustained warm run lets a regeneration finish. Engine lamp joining it and power down: stop.
Amber	Preheat coil — a coiled filament	Before a cold start on a diesel this is normal preheating. Flashing while you are driving, it is reporting an engine fault.	Preheat, yes. Flashing while driving, treat it as an engine warning, and stop if power has gone with it.
Amber	AdBlue, and water in the diesel	AdBlue low or an emissions-treatment fault on the later diesels. The droplet means water has collected in the fuel filter.	AdBlue, yes, but top up promptly — once the range runs out the engine will not restart. Water, only briefly.
Amber	ABS — the letters ABS in a bracketed circle	The anti-lock function has switched itself off. Ordinary braking is unaffected, and a wheel-speed sensor is as likely as the unit.	With care, and only if the red brake warning is out. Leave a bigger gap. It is also an MOT defect.
Amber	Stability and traction control, and the OFF version	Flashing means it is intervening. Steady means switched off or faulty — and it shares its sensors and hydraulics with the anti-lock system.	Flashing on a wet surface is normal. Steady on dry tarmac in ordinary driving means it is not protecting you.
Amber	Automatic gearbox fault — a message, sometimes with the service lamp; no standard glyph, so none is shown	A stored transmission fault, usually with a protective mode: one gear held, drive refused, or a gear dropped.	Short journey and get it read. If it refuses a gear or drops out of drive, stop using it.
Amber	Low levels — an oil can, and an expansion tank, each with a level line	Engine oil or coolant is below minimum. Neither is the red pressure or temperature warning above.	Yes, briefly. Check with the engine cold and top up. A level that falls again is a leak.
Amber	Brake pads worn, and tyre pressure	The pad sensor has reached its limit, or a tyre has lost pressure. One that keeps returning is usually a slow puncture.	Pads, yes, but book it. Pressures, only as far as somewhere you can check all four cold.
Amber	Lighting failure, and headlight faults	A lamp is out, or the module driving the headlights has a fault. On directional headlamps it is reporting the control side.	Yes, but a light that is out is an MOT failure. A warning that survives a new bulb is the circuit.
Amber	Stop & Start — the letter A in a circular arrow	The system has taken itself out of use, most often because the battery no longer holds enough charge for it.	Yes. Not a driving fault, but a battery that weak causes stranger problems than a stopped engine.
Amber	Driver assistance — a car between lane lines	The camera or the sensors cannot see, or the system has a fault. Dirt, road film, ice and rain are the everyday causes.	Yes. The car drives normally and the assistance is not there, so do not rely on it.
Green, blue and amber tell-tales	Dipped beam, main beam, indicators, front and rear fog lights, low fuel, passenger airbag off	These confirm that something is switched on, or that a level is low. Indications rather than faults.	Yes. Two deserve a look: a rear fog lamp dazzles the driver behind, and a passenger airbag shown as off should be off deliberately.

Which 3008 you are in, and what your dashboard is made of

The symbols are largely shared, because they follow an international convention rather than a Peugeot one. What changes between generations is the instrument they are drawn on — and that decides how you go looking for one.

The consequence is worth stating plainly. On a Mk1, if a lamp is not lit, it is not lit. On a Mk2 or a Mk3, a warning that is no longer visible has not necessarily gone: the view may have changed, a message may have been acknowledged, or the panel may not be drawing it where you are looking. That is why the advice below is to have the codes read even when the screen has gone quiet — the stored fault outlives the display of it.

When the display itself is the fault

Every warning on this page reaches you through the instrument panel, which makes the panel the one component worth ruling in or out before you chase anything it reports. It does not fail the way a cluster of needles fails, and the symptoms are distinctive once you know them.

That last one is why this section exists. When a panel misreports, every other symbol becomes untrustworthy, and a driver can spend a great deal of effort on a system that never had a fault. Separating them is not difficult in principle: have the modules those lamps name interrogated. Lamps lit while the modules hold no stored faults and the car behaves normally point at the panel or the path to it, and so does a dark or scrambled panel on a car that drives and scans clean.

Until that is established, treat every red warning as genuine. A panel you suspect is a reason to get the car looked at sooner, never a reason to assume a brake or airbag warning is imaginary.

Two practical points. Low supply voltage produces very similar behaviour — flicker, resets, phantom warnings — so the battery, its terminals and the earth connections are the cheapest thing to rule out and belong first. And the recorded mileage lives in the panel, which is why having your own unit repaired at circuit level rather than fitting a used one keeps the mileage and the vehicle data where they are. That work sits under instrument cluster and dashboard repairs.

One distinction specific to this car: on a Mk1 with the flip-up head-up display, a screen that stays down, stays blank or shows nothing at speed is that display and its mechanism, not the cluster behind the wheel. The two fail independently, and the cluster is the one carrying the warning lamps.

“Anti Pollution Fault” on a 3008

This message is a genuine 3008 signature, and the straight answer is that it is a category rather than a component: an emissions-related fault, usually alongside the engine management lamp, naming no part at all. A blocked particulate filter is one candidate; so are the EGR valve, the catalyst, and a sensor reading outside the range the engine management expects.

Two things about it are worth knowing before you spend anything. It can appear and clear between journeys while the code stays stored, so a message that has gone is not a fault that has gone. And because the wording names nothing, the stored code is the only thing that will — which makes reading the codes the first spend rather than the last.

The full explanation is on our dedicated page: what an Anti Pollution Fault actually means. If the particulate filter turns out to be the reason, what a DPF is and how a regeneration works explains why short journeys cause it.

Which lamp means a failed module on a 3008

Most warnings on a 3008 are a level, a bulb, a consumable or a sensor, and working through those first is both the right order and the cheapest. A handful are different: they sit in front of a control unit, and no amount of topping up or resetting will move them.

ABS and ESP

Anti-lock braking and stability control share their wheel-speed sensors and their hydraulic modulator, which is why one fault so often lights both. A sensor or its wiring is the cheaper and more common cause, so the codes are what separate them. On Peugeot and Citroën units the brake pressure sensor and switch inside the hydraulic assembly is a recognised failure point in its own right — we cover it on our page for the Citroën, Peugeot and Renault ABS pump ESP fault, with the wider work under ABS pump and module repairs. If the red brake warning is lit alongside, the car needs recovering rather than driving.

The automatic gearbox and its control module

The Mk2’s automatics — the six-speed EAT6 and the later eight-speed EAT8 — are torque-converter boxes managed by a transmission control module. When that module or its wiring fails the car does not gradually worsen: it takes a protective mode, holding a gear, refusing drive or dropping out of it, with a message alongside. Read the codes on equipment that talks to Peugeot’s transmission modules, because a basic reader frequently cannot see gearbox codes at all. The work sits under transmission control module repairs. One thing to get right before anything is removed: this is not the automated-manual gearbox used elsewhere in the range, where the clutch and gear actuator is a separate unit again.

The instrument panel

It belongs on this list because it is a control unit like any other — a board, a processor and a display. The symptoms that point at it rather than at what it reports are dimming, blanking, resets, missing areas and warnings with nothing behind them. Peugeot clusters of every generation reach the bench: the Peugeot 206 instrument cluster is a different unit from a 3008’s, but it is the same failure family — the display and the board behind it.

Electric power steering

Assistance on a 3008 is electric, so a steering warning is an electrical fault rather than a fluid one. Steering heavy from cold and normal once warm, assistance fading in and out, or a wheel heavy on one lock only, all point at the electronics rather than the rack. The symptoms of an electric power steering fault sets out how they present, and our write-up of Peugeot 207 power steering failure is the clearest worked example on this marque. Treat a red steering warning as a stop: intermittent assistance can become none.

The BSI and the body electronics

The BSI — the built-in systems interface — is the controller at the centre of the car’s multiplexed body network, and a problem there does not look like one fault. It looks like several: lighting, wipers, central locking, windows, the display, a car that will not go to sleep, a battery flat overnight. The tell is precisely that the symptoms have nothing to do with each other.

So do not chase each warning separately, and check the battery, terminals and earths before condemning anything — low system voltage makes several modules log faults at once and looks identical from the driver’s seat. What a body control module does explains the architecture these faults live in.

Engine management, and where it goes

There are too many possible causes behind an engine management lamp to guess at, so the codes come first. If diagnosis points at an internal failure of the engine ECU itself, that work belongs with the independent specialists at ecu-repairs.com. If it points at the turbocharger — on a turbo diesel a failed electronic actuator arrives as lost boost, an engine lamp and reduced power together — that is one for our turbo specialists at turbo-repairs.com, our sister site for everything turbo.

What to do when a warning light comes on in your 3008

The general sequence is on the Peugeot warning lights page. These are the steps a screen dashboard changes.

1. Take the colour at face value. Red means find somewhere safe and stop. Amber means you have time to think about it, but not an unlimited amount of it.
2. Photograph the panel before you switch off. That captures the exact wording, the symbols lit alongside it and the view it appeared in — three things that are hard to reconstruct afterwards.
3. Cycle the display views before deciding a lamp has cleared. A warning not drawn in the view you are showing has not necessarily gone out.
4. Do the checks that cost nothing. Parking brake fully off, fuel cap clicked shut, oil and coolant cold, all four pressures, doors and boot latched, and a walk round for a dead light.
5. Check the battery and its connections before chasing a screenful of warnings. On a car this multiplexed, low voltage produces several unrelated faults at once.
6. Have the codes read and written down, module by module. Do not clear them first: that throws away half the diagnosis, and silencing a brake, steering or airbag warning repairs nothing.

Peugeot 3008 warning lights FAQs