A4 Phil

Long talk with Audi Customer Experience about a SNAFU that was not Audi's fault this week. I had a amazing Audi rep contact me three times and on the final conversation I asked him about the Q6 e-tron as that is what I am looking to replace my OG e-tron with. He just matter of factly said that the software is so bad that Audi was forced to delay the release of the Q6 e-tron until after the Macan EV.

He said that Audi NA has been suggesting for a year to release the Q6 e-tron with the Porsche/Android hybrid OS, however, Audi mothership is not willing to plan a complete recall of the car to update to CARIAD like Porsche is. He said the customer base is different and Porsche owners will see it as part of the process and Audi owners will demand buy backs. Buy backs have to be sold with branded titles and big Audi is not willing to do that on a whole scale basis. Therefor Q6 e-tron is waiting for a workable/stable CARIAD implementation that will be upgraded with a shop visit and not OTA. He said that the production ready car has been ready for a year. Just waiting on software.

He said that the good news is that all Audi NA service centers are being shipped their new sub balances over the next month which will allow the to service the Q6 e-tron, so that is progress. Oh and apparently, the sub balancers are forced to the service centers and they have to pay for them. However the 800v architecture is not serviceable with the current Audi sub balancers. The new system is backwards compatible though, so it can function on our older e-tron vehicles as well.

dcpmark

Sounds like my next Audi ETron might be a Porsche. 😄

I actually Turo’d a 2024 Q8 ETron this weekend to see if it meets my range needs….. If it does, I likely will not wait for the Q6 and just decide between the Porsche and the 2024 Q8.

JNealCox

One plus for the Q8 is that the overall package has seen a lot of road miles and addresses several issues that were in previous versions. Contrary to a lot of comments, Audi updated a lot under the hood of the Q8. My hesitation with the Porsche would be that it is the first out of the block with the PPE platform.

jwsimon86

So do we imagine it's gonna ship with a ton of bugs?

JNealCox

Well, the hope is that all this extra time will let them address the bugs, but there will still likely be more that a few. Still, I think Audi wants to avoid the outrage the initial Q4 caused in the EU/UK when it was released with clearly half-baked software.

A4 Phil

Yes. This^

And I think a lot of us will have trouble believing any of Audi's "We'll update the software later" claims. Audi and Volkswagen have simply never followed through with any of these promises. Then they will double down on that by making a simply hardware change and then say that because of the hardware change the old car will never be updated to the new hardware level. This is what Audi did with the MMI improvements in the OG e-tron.

What the car ships with is what you should be prepared to drive forever. Audi is NOT Tesla.

BeefJerky

This is generally correct, though sometimes an actual upgrade slips through the cracks, and definitely not as a goodwill gesture.

An example is my 2021 e-tron SUV, which did not come with wireless AA/Carplay. A safety issue with the cameras not always initializing properly on the MMI3 systems came though, which required fixing. Apparently, it required such extensive fixing, with so many different modules, that they were "forced" to merge all the MMI3 code together. To fix all the separate years of code and keep them separate, I guess would've been too tedious and time consuming. Anyway, that's the story of how my 2021 e-Tron SUV got wireless AA/Carplay. I darn near had a heart attack when I realized I actually got a new feature, LOL!

3eyedblinky

Do we know if the Q6 will have a proper OTA update system? Not just for the infotainment stuff like MMI can already do I mean proper whole vehicle OTA it’s not something I want missing in my next car.

A4 Phil

Audi is saying that it will be full OTA, however, the base CARIAD update to 1.2 will need to be done by the dealer. OTA's will work with the shipped CARIAD, however, the CARIAD itself will need to be updated by service once the full 1.2 is released. Apparently the CARIAD update itself takes hours and involves the Mothership. It was this less than elegant solution or wait another year for CARIAD 1.2 to be stable.

3eyedblinky

Wait so these out of the gate will have this dealer mandated Day 1 update so to speak?