2018 SQ5 Rear Brakes Worn to "Yellow"
 

My 2018 SQ5 is 16 months old and has been driven 20,000 miles (32 000 km). My Audi dealer's service technician told me today, when SQ5 had the 20,000-mile service, that the rear brakes were "yellow." Replacing the two rear brakes, including rotors, pads, sensors, and labor, would cost about US$750.
Does that seem to be unusually rapid wear? Any advice on non-Audi rear brakes? Should I stick with Audi parts?

I can't believe you need rotors......I would think just pads.

I can't say I know if the new cars have rear sensors or not, on my S8 with the electric parking brake, it knows the pad thickness based on the cycle length when cycling the rear brake on occasion.

If they are "yellow" that means they are probably less than half thickness. You could get more time out of them if you inspect them and determine the thickness. I bet 5K to 10K miles.

Yes, that seems to be rapid wear to me. I usually get 70,000 miles out of brakes, but maybe it is the way you drive? You could also get a second opinion.

20k is fast. The sq5 seems to be have more rear bias on the brakes than I've typically seen. Maybe it's a crossover thing, this is the first one I've owned. My rears were toast at around 50k and I did the fronts at the same time in the interest of doing it all at once. Fronts probably still had 10k left on em. Not surprised the rotors need to go too, these pads are quite aggressive and my rotors had a pretty healthy lip around the outside

I've always been one to say don't go oem, but I'm beginning to eat my words on this car. I used some auto zone rotors with oem akebono pads on the rear and I was already seeing wear on them at 5k miles.

When you say rear brakes are yellow are you saying the brake wear indicator light was on. If so it should have been on when you brought the car in. The indicator light will actually at times be on then go off eventually staying on all the time.

That seems really quick for the pads to be shot. My Macan rears lasted for almost 40,000. Porsche also replaced the rotors as well when they did the brakes. I was told the rotors are soft and wear at a rapid rate as well.

I just checked the front rotors on the Porsche and they have substantial wear and will need replacement when the time comes to do the pads. My Audi hasn’t hit as many miles as your car but I’ll bet your rotors are well worn if the pads are shot.

Theses cars are brake biased to the rear in fact there’s a proportion valve that may be out of wack. I would have the dealer check front brake wear and see if that’s below normal wear. If front brake is low and rear brake wear excessive you may have a problem in the proportion valve.

Just something worth taking a look at but you should have gotten more than 20,000 out of the brakes. I’m also assuming you do not leave your left foot on the brake pedal which could apply pressure.

I'm going to say on the checkout sheet that the dealer uses, they measure tire depth, brake pad thickness, etc. They have three columns, green, yellow and red. His was in the yellow (or this is what I assume), so you can't know what the thickness of the pads is based on the information given. I'm sure they have quite a bit of life left. 20K miles is way too little to need replacement for 95% of the driver's out there.

Thanks to all for your comments and advice.

How do you drive it? If you are really aggressive with cornering, etc, the car uses brakes to do torque vectoring which eats through the pads.

I was referring to the color codes on the service report.

Drive it until the light goes off. You will still have 800 mile on them then.