Talking about engine, I noticed quite a bit of oil seepage in the valve cover area. Dealer says it’s normal. Wondering anyone else has it. No oil usage though as the seepage hasn’t turn into dripping yet.

Carbon on exhaust tips is not from oil, it’s from incomplete burn of gasoline by direct injection engine ( Audi calls it Straight Injection). Most new direct injection engines has it. My new Honda Pilot has it ( tail pipe is complete black with very thick layer of it, way worse than A4’s) so do all the European cars which adopted direct injection first.
I was cleaning the seepage yesterday and found the engine valve cover seal has soft brown gel kind sticky material coated at the seam. It can be scraped off if wipe on it a bit hard.

Was half qt low right before first change at 6000 miles as well? Hopefully this is just one time thing. Mines is at 24k miles now without any oil usage. I change oil at around every 6500 to 7000 miles. neither the MMI and the dipstick (from ECS Tuning) shows any oil level drop between changes.

With regards to oil usage, I have 14k on my car. When I had the oil changed at 10k the MMI showed the oil level full. 4K after that oil change it is still full. Note that there was one time the MMI showed 2/3 full but then the next day it was full, I suspect there are cases where the MMI sensor is fooled.

I am pleasantly surprised that this car uses no oil. Every Audi I have ever owned consumed some oil ( and that is a lot of Audi’s as you can see from my signature). This is the first one that does not. It never really bothered me because I am old enough to have driven in a time when oil consumption was expected and you checked your oil regularly. Heck, when I was young the gas station attendants offered to check your oil at every fill up.