danibear

This is pretty respectable. Hope they are coming up with a fix / recall soon.

As I really want to keep my S6 long time.

PS: does that mean 3 or 4 cylinder cars are not affected?

PS: I read here that some V10 R8 were also affected. But no mention stop of V10?

kelisko

This is apparently affecting MHEVs. I doubt 3 and 4 cylinder cars come with that feature. This thread is discussing the matter: Ordering suspended

A member posted a copy of the actual very interesting story here: Audi vs Vitesco

What caught my eye:

My thoughts:

This smells like planned obsolescence not working as planned. So Audi wanted the BSGs to be built to fail at some point, probably sometime after warranty, which Vitesco did but now that the BSGs are failing "according to plan", Audi are mad? Isn't this what they wanted?

(Sarcasm) - Okay, the parts should have waited until the warranty expires to fail without causing troubles to Audi so that they can charge the customer for the replacement of the sabotaged part. Now they are obliged to spend billions to replace thousands of failed BSGs and batteries at no charge. But this isn't Vitesco's fault. They built the BSGs following Audi's building regulations! Audi should review their sabotage plan more closely and provide Vitesco with improved building regulations that should make the sabotaging plan succeed this time.

So the part can actually be made to last. Good to know...

danibear

Wow………… if this is true, Audi is finitely shooting their own feet…..

Can’t understand planned fail of a safety related item which could cause lawsuits. If I were them to gather more funds down the road, I would do other annoying but not safety related items.

Say nothing of this planned failure is now failing too early. Definitely a failed failing plan….

Hope an actual fix is on the way!

ColdQ8

I have a comical story to share about this issue. I even documented it on video, which I should edit and publish on YouTube someday.

This past summer, I was at my cabin in Nothern, Ontario, 700km from any Audi dealership. On the drive back to my cabin, this message appeared which said the electrical system had malfunctioned and contact service. I continued driving and got close to my cabin before the car shut off. First, the AC and other systems started shutting down. Finally, the car turned off, and a polite female voice said, "Shutting down." It almost felt like a sci-fi movie where the spaceship was shutting off! So now my car is in the middle of the road and won't start. Every time I press the start button, it clicks, and the screen flickers and then turns off.

I reach and pull the driver's handle to get out - the door won't open. I try the passenger door, and it won't open. I climb to the back seats, and the same won't open. I am locked inside my Q8!

I phoned some friends and told them where I was with instructions to bring a hammer to smash the window. They laugh, thinking I'm being sarcastic or joking. No, I say, seriously, I am locked inside my car in the middle of the road. I can't put 4-way flashers on or get out to put the triangle roadsign. I'm stuck in my car in a dangerous place. This is a road, after all, not a parking lot. Thankfully, it's not a busy road - which sometimes could be worse as people might not pay as much attention to a dead car in the middle of the lane.

My friends arrive, sure enough, with a hammer. Before trying the hammer, he grabs the door handle. What do you know? It worked!

Now, briefly fast forward to yesterday and today. The driver's side door stopped opening today, with the dreaded e-brake malfunction message. So, if these two stars had aligned on this day of being locked in my car, they would have needed to break the window to get me out. I wonder what Audi's extended warranty would do about that one?!

The story doesn't end there because now I have to get my car off the road. Fortunately, knowing the battery was dead and a quick Google search said it was the starter/generator malfunction, I needed a jump. I used a booster pack and could drive the car using the booster pack close enough to my cabin and off the road.

I then called Audi, whose all service agents have phones from 1922 and accents stronger than any Tim Hortons drive-through. Not understanding each other, the first agent hung up on me. Totally *click* because they couldn't understand me and vice versa. The second phone call was near the first, as the agent kept telling me they would send someone to jumpstart my car because of the dead battery. I explained that jump-starting wouldn't help, as the starter/generator had failed and needed to be towed to the dealership. That phone call ended with the agent saying, "You need an apple basket," is what I heard. I put the phone on speaker so my friends could try and make out what he was saying, but they all agreed. He kept repeating, "You need an apple basket." Eventually, he got frustrated and hung up. So now we're on phone call #3, which went better. A person with no accent and a phone from our century answered, who arranged a flatbed to bring my car the 700 km to the nearest dealership.

That night, the flatbed didn't show up. Two days later, after many phone calls to remind Audi that I was still waiting, the flatbed showed up. The funny thing was the driver had his wife, and they figured why not take an all-expense holiday on Audi's dime since they were towing the car to a big city.

I was fortunate to have the car repaired two days after this incident. I was one of the lucky ones whose dealership had one of the generators in stock. Meanwhile, I have heard of cars waiting in a parking lot for replacement for 4-6-9 months. If it's any consolidation, I did have to purchase a flight ticket to get my car and use a tank and half of gas to drive it back.

Being locked inside a car was a new experience, and I hope never to relive it again! I do hope Audi is aware of the dangers of their faulty electronic robot cars

retom

A really unpleasant adventure. I'm sorry.
This thing about the locked door locks seems very strange to me. Audi has a mechanical connection between door handles and door locks. This is defined by safety regulations and it must be possible to open the door in an emergency situations. This requires strong pulling of the handle twice (breaking the initial resistance of the handle), but the door must open even if the battery is completely discharged.
I hope you will not have any more bad experiences with your car. Just in case: the rear tailgate has also a mechanical unlocking lever. See the owners manual for how to do it.

DrivingAround

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone.

The service technician said that it was the alternator/48V Generator that was the issue. Also pointed out that a bearing/bushing had to be changed that was also sent out to have an extended warranty I believe. An alignment will have to be done as well if that change is made.
I was told that it would be next week before we’d have our car back and Audi would be arranging for us to have a loaner.

I got the extended warranty which covers me for an additional 35K miles when we bought the car. We’ll see what is all covered.

More updates to come.

angrypengu

You know what I just noticed?

There are two tabs here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...oZ8/edit#gid=0

Take the average of all of the data points from both tabs individually

Both datasets come out to ~40,000 miles.

KevinGary

Sounds like i have approximately 12 months to go.

Jdsengineer

Then I'm golden. I only have 24K miles on the A7 and drive it 3K a year so I got 5yr to go before failure.
Of course by then the 7yr extended warranty Audi gave us on the BFG will be close to being up and so will my purchased extended warranty so I may be screwed to the tune of $4000 to fix !!
I put on my calendar to trade the car in 4yr !!

ThomasWShea

I didn’t look at this data but i wonder what it would look like as a bell curve w the individual data points over laid. Purpose of this visualization would be to see how concentrated toward 40,000 miles things are, or if the data is more widely distributed - which too me would mean that tho 40,000 is the avg, it is still a gamble.