Odilup

Am I able to retrofit a different wheel with paddle shifters to a 2012 A7 that currently does not have paddle shift?

I have seen information that suggests you can activate the paddle shifter within VagCom to make it work instead of using the shift selector to manually change gears.

Tman007

Yes.

There are several threads here that discuss this, with many people doing it successfully. The main tricky part is the airbag if you're sourcing it separately from the wheel -- the airbags alone are expensive and they're different depending on whether you have a flat-bottom or round wheel.