superswiss

Just a comment on this. Nowadays, that doesn't guarantee a fully charged battery anymore. Modern cars use more and more electricity. Electric power steering, electric oil pumps, complex Infotainment systems etc. So, you can actually get into a situation where the battery drains faster than it's getting charged if the car's electricity needs are higher than what's currently being generated. This for example can happen in stop & go traffic. The Q5 like pretty much all current Audis also has energy recuperation to help with this. When braking or coasting, the alternator voltage is increased to 14 Volts or something like that to increase the momentary battery charge. Energy management is quite sophisticated in these cars and it tries to do whatever it can to ensure there is always enough battery charge to start the engine.

MP4.2+6.0

You should get a scan--or DIY if you have VCDS.

Barring a simple fuse issue, a guess/worry is the unit may have blown up. Happened on our 2013 Q5 a year or two ago. Driving home one day right at the end of a 200 mile trip and waiting at a stop light, I happened to hear the obvious (but quiet) sick sound of hard drive head crashing as I was looking at the screen. With that system shut down, screen went instantly dark, and it never came back. Dealer had to replace whole unit for a commodity 40G hard drive that was essentially obsolete 5 years ago...think old iPod 40G hard drive players. In my case under 4/50 warranty. Was over a U.S. $3,000 part for whole Nav unit; hopefully by now they have some kind of exchange.

Dealer told me BTW they had seen some of same issue on other vehicles of that generation of Nav/MMI, though more the A5/S5.

ATC69

I have used a battery tender overnight, drove for two hours, unplugged and replugged the fuse, did a MMI reboot, and unplugged the neg. terminal of the battery. All to no avail. I'll plea for the one time exception to the warranty !

Going in tomorrow.

ATC69

I should have replied earlier, but -

My problem was a crashed hard drive in the MMI. They had to order the ($3000) part. Once replaced, all is well.

Fortunately, I was mistaken about the warranty. Forgot I had 4 years instead of 3. Whew!

snagitseven

$3000 for a hard drive that probably costs Audi no more than $300. That clearly illustrates how parts costs have spiraled completely out of control.

NorthValley

That's just being nice. I call it abusing your customers.

spijun

Price for this HDD is 60-70$ (60GB)

In Europe exist services which recovery MMI unit for 200-400 Eur

Here explanation for HDD in MMI:
AudiEnthusiasts Master

How to upgrade MMI 3G HDD to SSD:
https://mega.nz/#!y8p3SSJS!QeghQ38kI...tg-ezrywD4DZIo

How to recovering a dead MMI 3G and 3G Plus:
https://www.scribd.com/doc/225614389...-3G-or-3G-Plus

Redd

60GB hard drive? Do they still make them that tiny in Europe? And are metric gigabytes the same capacity as Imperial ones?(G)

We're already at the point where any kind of "spinning platters" for storage is simply cheap, compared to SSDs. And pretty much technologically inexcusable in a moving vehicle. There should be an SSD of equal or larger capacity that can be used in the MMI as well.

superswiss

Just to be clear. We are not talking about a consumer variety hard drive here. These are automotive grade hard drives and as everything specialized, you don't exactly pick them up at your next Best Buy for a few dollars. These things can withstand up to 3G vibration tolerance during operation and temperatures in excess of 200 degrees fahrenheit and the market is not exactly flooded with them. They've generally been available in significantly lower capacities compared to consumer hard drives. The automotive industry should probably move to SSDs, but again, chipsets that withstand the harsh environment that a car can be exposed too are significantly more expensive than your consumer grade SSD.

I don't think Audi dealers just replace the hard drive. That would require them to partition and format it, and install the OS etc. on them. I doubt they are equipped for that. They just replace the entire 5F module with a new one, which explains the price tag. The 5F module is the entire brain of the MMI, that contains the hard drive and everything else.

Redd

No doubt they are "special" but even that covers a wide range. At 60GB you don't need an SSD, you can use a ten year old low capacity IronKey (brand) of USB stick. They never were cheap either, but even a decade ago, they could blow those specs away.

As to formatting and all...no, that's something that can be done by the parts supplier, or in the parts chain. Swapping out an expensive module instead? Sure, then credit back a similarly expensive core fee and have the old one returned and rebuilt. The same way that alternators and compressors and starters almost always (shh!) are.

The point being, some of the prices are simply obscene. Some of the technology is firmly obsoleted. In the long run, that way of doing business hurts both the bottom line, and the customer.