lelewis

Hi, I'm moving to Switzerland, and am trying to decide if I should ship my 2021 Q5 from the US. Does anyone know what modifications I would need to make to the car? I heard about the red vs yellow blinkers, and rumors about the bumper system, but I can't find other info. Shipping isn't too expensive, but if the modifications to the car are a lot, it won't be worth it.

Elvisfan

Try googling “import us car to Switzerland “ plenty of information.

lelewis

Thanks. Yes, lots of good information. I have been doing that for several days. All of the articles talk about the shipping process and customs costs, taxes etc. I can't find anything about the required changes after the import process is finished. In Switzerland (and most EU countries) there is a technical assessment done after the import and before they allow you to register the car and drive it. It is that last step I'm trying to understand.

Windows95

Checking out the Europrice might give you an idea of what's involved, such a swapping out the rear light lights to get amber turn signals. Not sure if any coding is needed for headlights.

superswiss

Hey there. I saw your thread originally, but forgot to respond. I'm from Switzerland, but have lived in the USA for the last 20 years. First off, Switzerland is not part of the EU just so you know. It's part of Schengen and the EEA (European Economic Area), but it's not a member of the EU. As such, Switzerland has its own rules in many areas, but certain regulations are shared. The main changes that are required affect the headlights and taillights. Yes, for starters, the indicators in all of Europe have to be Amber. Red indicators as is common in North America are illegal in Europe. The headlights also need to be replaced as the North American beam patterns are not legal in Europe. They blind other drivers. In Europe they now also have matrix headlights in pretty much all cars. You will get flashed with just regular LED lights, but if you the lights have the matrix hardware then you can enable the feature with coding.

EU spec cars also have a so-called tourist mode, which temporarily adjusts the left and right beam pattern for LHD vs RHD if you cross between the UK and the mainland. If you don't plan to ever drive to the UK, though, then this doesn't matter and it can probably be enabled with coding, however see the about the MMI below.

The next thing is if you don't have the Virtual Cockpit you will have to replace the instrument cluster as it is mandatory for the speedometer to be in kph. This are the big items. There may be other things I'm not fully aware off, so you are best off finding an importer that handles bringing the car into compliance. Such companies exist in Europe. They can give you a full quote of importing the car and get it compliant with Swiss and EU regulations.

The one thing that is not required, but may end up bothering you is that you will find it difficult to convert the MMI over to the EU maps and firmware and Audi connect won't work, because your car has an US VIN. Audi doesn't have a straight forward way to load up maps from an entirely different region. This will affect things like the tourist mode above which functions automatically by detecting when you cross the borders and it will also affect things like traffic sign recognition and driver assistance features if you have them. These depend on the navigation maps for certain aspects. I have seen outfits that claim they can convert the US MMI to EU MMI, so look into those if this is important to you. When I did European Delivery with my RS5 in 2013 Audi gave me a portable Garmin, because of these and my RS5 didn't have things like traffic sign recognition and such at the time, so it wasn't an issue. I did another European Delivery with my current AMG in 2019. Mercedes has the ability to load the maps, so everything was working while I was in Europe including traffic sign recognition. The only thing that wasn't working were the online services, so I didn't have live traffic, so I used CarPlay and Google Maps the entire time. But as said, traffic sign recognition and all the driver assistance systems were a 100% functional. The former was especially helpful in case you don't know already, but Switzerland takes speed limits very seriously and the fines are a percentage of your incoming. The more money you make the higher the speeding fine gets.

Lastly, where in Switzerland are you moving to? I was born outside of Zurich in Winterthur, but we moved to the countryside near Liechtenstein and that's where I mostly grew up. I'm toying with the idea of eventually moving back and I have thought about whether I would take my car with me. I've come to the conclusion that selling it and buying something new over there will be much easier. Partly because of things like the online services not working. The other part is that the roads, parking structures etc. are much smaller and narrower in Europe and large cars like the Q5 and even my current AMG can be a bit much in daily situations. Usually when I visit home I rent something like a VW Golf. So much easier to get around, and when available I get a manual transmission, otherwise I'm bored out of my mind with the speed limits everywhere. I loved doing European Delivery with both my RS5 and AMG, but parking them in parking structures across Europe w/o ending up scratching something was a bit nerve wracking. Not to mention that the performance of these particular cars was wasted in Switzerland and took concentration to not exceed the speed limits and end up with a large fine as mentioned above. Obviously, those cars were a blast to drive on the German Autobahn, though.

Alex@Europrice.us

You would likely want to speak to an export/import company on the specifics. As mentioned in the post above there may be Swiss specific things needed, but for certain you will need taillights to be changed to have an orange turn signal.

Depending on your car you will want either the standard LED or need the OLED. You can also upgrade from LED to OLED if you wanted:

Q5, SQ5 FY Facelift | '21+ Lighting Products <-Click Link for More Information

If you or anyone else has questions on this don't hesitate to let me know here or via email: contact@europrice.us

Cheers,