graytag

Having had several Audis over the years, and coming out of a 2015 AR, I have a love/Hate with my Q5. The "hate" portion is 99% driven by this Sh@tty, buggy MMI. Screens freeze just enough to be annoying but not enough to ever replicate for the dealer. It will happen with the camera, with XM, with nav, with CarPlay, etc....nothing consistent. The dealer always says to note what mode it's in at the time so they can attempt to rectify but my answer is always, "It's indiscriminate and happens in all modes at random times." Last night my rearview camera stayed on after shifting into drive and getting up to 40 MPH. The screen was non responsive- wouldn't turn on/off, volume, etc. After 15 minutes of driving, it reset itself. It's frustrating to have an expensive car I otherwise love with an intermittent problem no one can fix.....guess that's the price we pay for driving computers?!

BTW, the other 1% of the "hate" is for the intermittent speaker static that the dealer says I have to "F" with all my settings to try to identify it's cause- treble, bass, etc......yeh, right. I'll just suck it up through the end of the lease.

I do love the ride and comfort though.

Chawski

It's always incredibly difficult when you have something that can't be replicated. I've been in the same boat with other things so I know how frustrating it is, but from the dealers perspective, they can't fix what they can't find wrong.

Maybe you could buy an inexpensive dash cam and suction cup it to the fixed portion of the roof and aim it on the screen. Anytime it happens, note the time and date and then you can compile something to show them

kanack49

Sorry to hear this. I honestly have not had any MMI issues. Admittedly I use it as little as possible since the maps are nowhere near as easy to use as my phone.

superswiss

Intermittent issues are the worst. As a software engineer I deal with them on a regular basis. They are very hard to fix, because they can't be reproduced. Knocking the dealer for it is not fair. What you are experiencing is not representative of the MMI. I've been driving lots of different Audis on long trips with the same MMI system as your Q5 and I've never experienced that kind of issues you are describing. Have you tried to reset your MMI? You push up and hold the Nav/Telephone and Radio/Media rocker switches simultaneously and then push and hold the rotary **** until the screen turns black. Let go and wait for the MMI to restart. If that doesn't help, then there's something wrong with the system in your particular car. You might have electrical issues or something. This generation Q5 is made in a brand new factory in Mexico and its now at the beginning of the second MY. If yours is a 2017, then it's a first MY even. There are bound to be issues. It's a good idea to skip the first model year of any new car and perhaps a good idea to skip the first two until this plant has some solid track record.

Chawski

^ while the mmi is technically new, it's the same system across the face-lift models. Some are shipped to Mexico to go in the q5, some are shipped to Germany to go in the others.

superswiss

Correct. My point is that the MMI is part of a larger system that is assembled somewhere in a plant. For the Q5 that's in Mexico. There are wiring harnesses and other peripherals that hang off the MMI. So if something wasn't put together correctly and the car has electrical issues it could affect the MMI, and the freezing issues etc. he has are just symptoms of a problem somewhere else in the car.

graytag

graytag

superswiss

I'm not sure what you do for a living, but it doesn't sound like you are involved in engineering products. It's a pretty widely accepted opinion by professionals and savvy buyers that the first MY of a car is the most problem ridden. It's when the car gets mass-produced for the first time and into the hands of actual consumers. There are bound to be issues to come up that weren't identified during development or were deemed a lower priority and not critical to hold up shipping of the product. As an engineer myself, I can tell you we are under constant pressure to ship, so we all know that the initial version of a product is never really ready. It's shipped when it's good enough and we all know that we have to continue iterating on it while it's already being sold. There are enough folks who can't wait and have to buy something the moment it comes out, so there is plenty of real world testing and feedback coming in to improve the product. Those in the know who are willing to let the early adopters struggle and wait for the product to mature a bit, generally end up with a better experience.

This is not unique to cars. The version 1 of any product or a major new version is generally to be avoided and wait for a few revisions to come out before buying it if you can wait. As for cars, I personally tend to wait for the mid-cycle refresh. That's when most of the bugs are worked out, and feedback from journalists etc. about the car have been incorporated. W/o exception for all the cars I've bought, the facelift was the better and more thought out product than the initial release. I used to be an early adopter for pretty much everything, but as I have aged and acquired experience, I've become willing to wait for things to mature before buying them if it's a product that I'm gonna rely on.

As for the new factory, you can teach skills, but you can't teach experience. The new Q5 is made by an entirely new team that hasn't worked on the prior Q5 or any Audi for that matter. There are cultural and team dynamics that have to work themselves out first. If you've ever managed a multinational team it takes a while for cultural differences to be absorbed into the process. A factory in German staffed by mostly Germans has a vastly different dynamic than a factory staffed by Mexican workers and managed by Germans. I've been an engineering director myself, so I have first hand experience of building teams that churn out quality products and it always takes time for a team to come together and get experienced.

Ron.S