smileman83

Has anyone tried to trade on a different vehicle line ( BMW, etc) and seen what the drop in value has been?

ThomasWShea

Audi is offering you 5,000$ off a new vehicle. I think you will take a bath. Check though. Car will be worth about half of the sticker price at the 2 year mark as a trade in - if you sell private party you might get 75%. If you have a highly desired model like a S or RS it won’t be as bad.

smileman83

Well thats about normal for trade after 2 years with Audi anyway. I was referring to the general knowledge out there that the cars are a major problem. Still havent heard of anyone getting a repair that will be permanently fixed, just another alternator and restart some type of clock. If we are truly working toward a fix, then I'll wait. If there is no end in sight may start moving away. This has been my second audi and had an A8 prevuiously. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me as they say. Such a shame for a nice car design.

ThomasWShea

They extended the warranty for the BSG to 7 years. They don’t announce “hey everyone we are working on a fix to our product that is breaking in a way we didn’t expect!”. It either happens, or it doesn’t. I would hope the availability of the BSG will improve by the end of the year if not before even if no permanent fix shows up.

oleaudi

Is there a knowledge base as to which alternators are failing, ie. air cooled vs water cooled. Also, does using the auto start versus disabling the auto start have any effect on the alternator failures? Do the MY23 models have the same alternator, "kicking the can down the road"?

smileman83

Extending a warranty has nothing to do with a diagnosis. It simply means if yours breaks your covered. The cost of a repair would be one thing, its the being stranded in the middle of nowhere that is the disturbing part. A very uncomfortable feeling when you have long travel plans. I know nothing is bullet proof, but it seems that with the length of time this has been going on, there would be some better news.

retom

I wonder when dealers will have large quantities of remanufactured alternators. Audi probably already has already a lot of damaged alternators in their warehouses and they will probably start regenerating them soon. As far as I know, the BSG failure consists in burning the electronics (transistors) that is inside and certainly replacing the board with this electronics will bring the alternator back to life. I think that sooner or later Audi will start to propose replacing the damaged alternator with a remanufactured one. BTW a remanufactured alternator is just as good as a new one.

smileman83

Of course that still doesn't address the cause which is unknown

ThomasWShea

funny you mention that, i was wondering if you took the board out, if you could just replace the faulty components, and update the software, and be off and running.

ThomasWShea

The units failing are the BSG (water cooled belt-driven starter generator) units, the air cooled units are not technically BSG, they are just alternators, and they are not failing. In the U.S. it seems that most SQ8 cars have the air cooled alternator and most Q8 and RSQ8 cars have the BSG. Basically, people on this forum are acting as our own knowledge board - there is no way to get meaningful information from audi. Yes, so far, from what we have seen MY23 cars have the same BSG and alternators. But a couple SQ8 cars are coming w 48 volt capacitors, instead of 48 volt LiIon batteries. There are also cars with no 48 volt system, and those cars also do not have the BSG, they have the air cooled alternator.