Airkewld

First post, I have a 2016 S6 and I was traveling on the freeway at night and the interior lights along with the gauges turned off and then right back on, car didn't turn off though, kept on going, no issues. It has happened one time before, I have only owned the car for 6 weeks. Has this happened to you? Any ideas?

Thanks Pete.

DeerHunter

Do you have your headlights set to Auto? The light sensor has the following functions:

• Light outside - dash lights on
• Dark outside; Headlights off - dash lights off (this is to prevent you from erroneously driving with only your DRLs and no tail lights)
• Dark outside; headlights on - dash lights on

I'd put money on a malfunctioning ambient light sensor.

MikeS6

Well it sounds like the whole dash stopped functioning... which would be more than a "dimming" of the lit dash instruments. If the OP can confirm that the whole dash went completely black. (as in turned completely off)

tenspeed

That would certainly grab my attention.

Mention it to the service adviser next time your in. They might know where to start looking.

Airkewld

The entire dash and door panels, everything interior wise, went dark and was like an immediate reboot

MikeS6

I had an issue with my entire MMI system, where it would just stop working while driving, the screen went black, and retracted (folded down in to dash). After a long drama story, it turned out to be a wire harness that was barely clinging onto the connection, intermittently unplugging causing the outages. At the factory in Germany the fastener was not put in place to assure that does not happen, so they had to order the fastener and have it installed. I wonder if it's a wire harness. Of course it could be anything... I just figured I'd mention it because it sounds like the same issue I had with my MMI.

m444

Odd, but have it checked out at the dealer.

I had this happen on a new 1999 Mustang, my whole dash went out for a awhile then came back. It was due to a loose bulk head connector to the dash that was not securely latched.

My 2011 B8 S4 (at 1500 miles) had a dash light up with all indicator light lit and transmission disconnected. After I shut the car off and turned it back back on everything was fine. Dealer only found implausbile signal alternator 18V in ECU fault code. It never happened again in 45k miles.

Airkewld

Happened again this morning and it is only the cluster that is going dark this time. It basically looks like the gauges redline, when you start the vehicle and come back to normal. I will be calling the dealer to get it checked out. Thanks for all the responses.

R_A8

Keep us posted. My 2017 just did it today as well. Just the gauge cluster. It goes black, then powers right back up again and speedo/tach do the sweep motion.

R_A8

Update: Instruments go out about every other day now. MMI sometimes does not sync between the pop up LCD and the dash cluster (e.g., LCD displays correct song playing from music source and dash indicates that the device is still being loaded). Also the clock randomly resets to midnight, then on next start will correctly set based on GPS. I'm also noticing that the phone bluetooth connection drops during calls quite frequently. Note: Same phone was not an issue with my 2013 S6 so it is likely related to this MMI issue. I'm going to make an appointment to bring the car in. If anyone has any experience with this as well or knows of applicable TSB, please let me know. I'll keep you all posted as I learn more.

On an unrelated note, the car tends to re-arm and lock as I go for the door handle, after previous unlocking. This is something that might normally be associated to accidentally touching the lock button when grabbing the door handle, but I've been driving the same C7 model platform for over 5 years (S6 and A6) and I'm used to avoiding this, so maybe a key proximity thing?. Let me know if anyone has had a similar experience.