Why Audi Alignments Are So Expensive and Difficult

As many Audi owners are painfully aware, it’s not cheap or easy to get those vehicles aligned, thanks to various ADAS calibration needs.

As many Audi owners are already (in some cases, painfully) aware, their vehicles can be rather complex, to say the least. There’s certainly nothing wrong with creating a precision product, but that also means that Audi owners must follow a more stringent maintenance schedule than the average mass machine, if nothing else. There are several ways one can ensure that their Audi enjoys a long, trouble-free life, one of them being frequent suspension alignments that will extend the life of those components. Trouble is, that job isn’t easy nor inexpensive to complete, and for one very good reason.

It’s a frustrating dilemma for many, including AudiWorld member mtroxel, who owns a B9 Audi A4. When they took that vehicle in for an alignment recently, the tire shop told them that they simply couldn’t do it “because of the backup camera and the automatic braking/adaptive cruise control stuff, that those systems would all need to be re-calibrated after an alignment and they can’t do that.” Turns out, there are some valid reasons why Audi would require those sorts of things, even when other models from other brands with the same ADAS equipment don’t.

In a Reddit post from a couple of years ago, this same question surfaced after another Audi owner was quoted $1,775 by a dealer for a suspension alignment and calibration, which is obviously a lot of money. This post received a helpful reply from an actual experienced Audi technician, who goes by the user name 2_Bros_in_a_van, who provided us with some excellent insight into why this job is so complicated and expensive.

“The four wheel alignment is required for proper thrust/steering angle of the vehicle,” they said. The Pre-Sense camera calibration requires time consuming precise measurements for the calibration board. This includes distance relative to the front axle, bumper, vehicle ride height, windshield camera, and board hight. If these measurements are not performed correctly, the calibration fails.”

“The Peripheral Camera system requires a separate calibration with precision measurements of two elongated mats by the sides of the vehicle. These mats must be perfectly square to the vehicle and a relative to the front axle centerline as your point of reference. The ACC calibration varies from model to model. The ultrasonic Doppler radar systems consist of the slightly different measurements than the Pre-Sense camera, but instead utilizes a ‘mirror’ board with three distinct angles of deflection. Once again, if your mirror setup is incorrect, the calibration will fail. Laser ACC has a similar setup to traditional radar, but instead uses an image board.”

“That’s three different setups for imaging and calibration, plus utilizing guided functions in ODIS to initialize the calibration process. As far as independent ADAS calibration shops go, it’s hit or miss. They’re getting their software much further downstream than the OEMs. Some have problems, some go right through. With these systems I have learned one indispensable rule; garbage in…garbage out.”

Regardless, in some cases, these recalibrations may not necessarily be needed. “When I got my A4 aligned the Audi dealer also wanted to calibrate everything,” said SchwarzS6. “What I told them was everything was working fine before alignment – even lane centering and lane departure warning, which I enabled with VAG-COM. I said that if they did the alignment to factory specs then there should be no need to recalibrate. So I told them to just do the alignment which they agreed to do and everything was fine.”

Thus, one certainly has options when it comes to aligning an Audi vehicle, if nothing else. But in a world where ADAS features rely heavily on being calibrated properly – and the potential for things to go horribly wrong if they aren’t – ponying up to have it done right certainly seems like a strong option.

Photos: Audi

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Brett Foote

Brett Foote has been covering the automotive industry for over five years and is a longtime contributor to Internet Brands’ Auto Group sites, including Chevrolet Forum, Rennlist, and Ford Truck Enthusiasts, among other popular sites.
He has been an automotive enthusiast since the day he came into this world and rode home from the hospital in a first-gen Mustang, and he's been wrenching on them nearly as long.
In addition to his expertise writing about cars, trucks, motorcycles, and every other type of automobile, Brett had spent several years running parts for local auto dealerships.
You can follow along with his builds and various automotive shenanigans on Instagram: @bfoote.