smohr33

Hi all. Figured I'd share the below story about my wife's brand new SQ5 as a warning to other owners. I wasn't able to find this problem anywhere else online so hopefully it's isolated! The car was purchased new a few weeks ago and has 500 miles on it.

We were driving the other night and auto start/stop engaged at an intersection. When I lifted my foot off the brake the car didn't restart and I got a CEL and message ("Drive system: malfunction! Please contact service.) I turned the key off and restarted the car and was able to keep driving. I pulled over a few miles later to turn the car off and restart again to try and get rid of the CEL. This time the car wouldn't start at all. After multiple restart attempts, still nothing. I let the car sit on the side of the road for 20 minutes while calling roadside assistance and finally tried to restart again; car restarts with no CEL or message! We kept driving to our destination with auto start/stop disengaged and made it. Car was parked for 2-3 hours and then we got in to head home. Go to start the car, no start and CEL/message. Still no start on multiple attempts. After 30 minutes, got it going again and made it home with auto/start stop disabled.

The car is now at my local dealer who diagnosed it as a bad starter. Of course the starter is out of stock in the US and will take 2 weeks to get here from Germany. Needless to say, we're not very happy at the moment.

I'll try to update this thread once we have resolution.

spindlewood

The SQ5 will be my first Audi (coming in 3 months) and the prospect of having to wait weeks for parts gives me pause. I wouldn't have thought that Audi could ship a new model and not have parts inventory in the US. - especially for something as basic as a starter. I've never had to wait more than 3 days for a car part to arrive - even BMW parts.

Guess I was being naive. I hope this is this because it is a new model and platform - and therefore availability will improve with time.

ericguqin@gmail.com

That's why I never like this auto start/off feature in any cars. Yes it may save some gas, but the noise and other "bad feeling" outweigh the advantage.
Audi should really provide an option to turn the feature off permanently, no need to press that button everytime.