Well, I haven't had any real issues with this car for quite a long while, but last month I've finally started experiencing something that has never happened before: The EV system started kicking in and out very frequently. I'd like to briefly describe my concern and get y'all to tell me what this issue might be called, because I'm pretty sure my dealership is ****ing me about right now (I know, I know—when are they not?). By now, I've seen a whole bunch of terms bandied about, like EV hesitation but I just don't know whether this is precisely what I'm experiencing.

So, I've been driving this car for about 5 years and I love it, and I know it well. I know when I can remain in EV mode only and when (especially while moving uphill) it asks for the ICE to add power. Right now, however, driving on a completely flat highway, I've been getting kind of the reverse effect, to the point that it feels like I'm basically driving a four-banger and the EV system blinks on and off—sometimes as frequently as every 5-10 seconds! The end result of this is that there's a palpable power loss, and the delay after trying to gas it tells me that I must be relying mainly on the ICE, hence the turbo lag, right?

I have an extended warranty, so the first time I brought it in, they found nothing. The second time, they told me about some sort of "bulletin" regarding a software update and about adjusting the transmission. But, nothing's changed effectively, and I'm seeing them again this coming Monday. I'd feel a lot better if I knew I could tell them what to look at or what the most likely culprit might be, since they appear to do the absolute minimum normally. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

Sounds like your battery is on the way out. If I was you, I would scan the error codes before going to the dealer and present them with what you found. If they still give you the runaround, escalate. In my case, I went twice wit the same error codes and they ordered a battery the second time around. Here's my error codes, the red ones are the ones to worry about:

 

Ah, jeez. I don't even have any OBD equipment. Is there a code reader that you might recommend?

I also noticed that your mileage is incredibly low—just 65,000 km! I just surpassed 80,000 km. That's all it takes for the EV battery to crap out?? That's terrible.

According to the Internet, the warranty is typically 8 years or 100,000 mi / 160,000 km, so this is just . . . nuts. I've been so gentle with this car, too. What the heck.

 

It probably has more to do with total charging cycles than total miles driven. My wife usually does not drive far but enough to drain and recharge the battery almost daily.

For diagnostic tools, the OBDeleven was a good deal years ago but I'm not up-to-date on what's reasonable now. Hopefully others will chime in.

 

@MH62 Hi, friend! So, I went and got an OBDeleven 3.

(Side note for those wishing to get the OBDeleven3: I paid CAD $187.94 ordering from the makers in Latvia, which was possibly a mistake—although you do get to support the developers directly—because they went and shipped the tiny thing by DHL who in turn charged me CAD $35.36 for brokerage fees nothing ). I must've not had my coffee yet, because I later found the thing (that's $174.33 after shipping, which makes for a small difference, but you won't pay those ridiculous "brokerage" scam fees) (plus a little extra for shipping).


I've never connected anything to my OBD port before, but the device was extremely
easy to connect and it soon lit up with a mysterious, blue glow.


The app was also extremely easy to connect and sync (I kept the car in
Accessory Mode). After doing what I assume was a firmware update, the
app asked me to select a model year.


The app+device had no issues with performing a scan. I got 4 faults (there's
no active CEL, btw). No one cares about the sat radio tuner. The telematics
thing (AFAIK) is off because these cars had 3G in them so, when Canada
began to shut down the 3G networks in 2022, apparently some cars simply
lost the ability to make SOS calls. Anyway, the Battery Energy Module and
the Battery charger didn't have anything egregious listed for them, which
was disappointing.


For the Battery Energy Module Fault, the app reported a past issue. This
was not really a surprise.


For the Battery Charger Fault, there was nothing exciting either. This also
might've been the result of a couple of power outages that happen in the
fall around here now and again.


I got very excited when the Notifications tab promised a Hybrid Battery
Check, but then . . .


*womp womp* Honestly, this was very surprising because, AFAIK OBDeleven is
basically a VW/Audi-centric tool. fml



Please don't get me wrong—the OBDeleven 3 is an extremely powerful
device. However, for the issue at hand I learned very little. ChatGPT
told me to at least retrieve these values, so I did.


I'm not really sure that these numbers tell me anything and any variance in
the live data seems to be negligible.

In conclusion:

• The OBDeleven 3 is heckin' cool but they've got to add the PHEV battery stats for Audi cars.
• I have no recourse as far as Audi Canada is concerned until, or unless, things get significantly worse and the deterioration begins to show on the scans.
• There now seems to be no conceivable reason for the EV system to blink on/off intermittently or to display any "hesitation" when I'm basically driving on a flat highway and it doesn't need to futz with the ICE because it shouldn't really need that much power. The plot thickens.
• Having said this, I now have the tool to keep checking things until things finally deteriorate, which would give me recourse to complain to Audi.
• None of this explains why MH62 wife's car got the battery degradation message at 65,700 km with daily drain/recharge cycles while (with quite similar usage—I basically go into town then return and plug in) I'm still not getting the battery degradation message at 80,000 km . . . except climate, perhaps. How cold does it get where you live, MH62? Vancouver Island has been getting warmer these past few years and I have always noticed a direct correlation between better weather and better reported/estimated range.
• As far as I know, Audi Canada states the following—but, of course, I cannot prove a defect at present.

Source

P.S. The OBDeleven team has actually just responded to me:

 

There's been multiple instances of the battery packs failing, I believe theres 6 or 8 of them and they go one at a time. The root cause seems to be that you can drive at 80mph battery only but that kills them as theyre not beefy enough to handle highway speeds on pure EV. Poor design but to be fair it was Audis first attempt.

 

@Coffs Well . . . 80 mph is what, 128 kph or so? It'd be silly to drive at that speed in EV-only mode because the battery is tiny (well, the 2026 model has a 100 km EV-only range, which is double what I have) and meant for hybrid mode—that's where I've gotten excellent fuel economy and great performance.

What concerns me is that, from this thread alone, we see that the HV battery can fail far before the halfway point of the warranty period and, if what you're saying is true for my model (Can I ask how you found this out? Is this maybe something that Audi techs and such know but the company doesn't advertise?) then it's a sort of dumb process of waiting for one or more of the battery packs to degrade sufficiently badly which would then allow me to request an under-warranty replacement.

What's even more concerning is that we can feel our cars beginning to underperform but (I'm guessing here) the threshold for HV battery degradation doesn't seem to be set at the correct level to produce a fault. Knowing how the parent company does business when it comes to cars reporting things, though, this isn't surprising. Plus, it's a great way for them to cover their asses and gaslight their customers by allowing the techs to point at a clean fault scan, whereas what's happening is still happening, only very slowly . . . which is too bad—despite the numerous small issues throughout, I really enjoyed driving this car (and this, in fact, might've been my favourite car to date). 🤷‍♀️

 

@MH62 You were right about everything . . . and all it took was 4° C (49° F) weather. (I don't know why it didn't occur to me that a cold-weather start would reveal everything. 🤦‍♀️) Today, after a cold start, I got a CEL right away. My 10-minute drive to Canada Post was a nightmare—if someone had been tailgating me, I would've "braked" right in their face as I'd suddenly lost power—twice. When I got home, I connected the OBDEleven to the car and it lit up like a goddamn Christmas tree:

• NEW 1 x TCM fault
• NEW 1 x ECM fault ('Control Module Improper Shutdown')
• 1 x HV battery fault ('Hybrid Battery Pack Voltage Variation Exceeded Limit')
• NEW 1 x ('Hybrid/EV Battery Pack "C" Deterioration')
• NEW 2 x ('Hybrid/EV Battery Pack "G" Deterioration')
• 1x Battery Charger fault (I'm pretty sure this simply has to do with the above)

The proof I needed.

Now, I feel rather pissed, because I clearly told the dealership to look into the TCM, ECM, and HV battery issues, but the last two times they treated me like I was crazy and didn't do anything (or, quite possibly, simply cleared the faults and hoped those would go away). Now I wish I had the OBDEleven earlier, so I could tell whether this was a slowly developing issue with the dealership leading me on or whether it really has appeared just now (there's just no way—the power loss has been palpable and ongoing for almost 1.5 months now).

I took all these screenshots and replied to my email thread with the dealership (making sure to let them know that I didn't clear any of the faults or change any of the settings), asking them to take care of these issues under my extended Audi warranty. We'll see what happens next.

By the way, something else occurred to me about this whole situation: If I had driven this car normally (I stopped all long-distance driving because of the Pandemic), then the warranty on the HV battery pack would most likely have been long gone by now. Until I hit these issues, I loved this car and was daydreaming about moving to another Q5e (since they have a better range) only if/when Audi brought back (at least some of) the HW buttons (I hate their touch screens so much), but now I don't even know. It's normal to fight the dealership on run-of-the-mill issues, but this has been a special kind of pain in the ***.

 

Let us know how the dealer responds. Also get ready for a lengthy repair if they have to order parts. Been waiting over 2 months to get ours done. Luckily, we have their loaner car hostage. If I was you, I would make sure to leave with a loaner while they assess your issue.

 

Check out my saga. Ours has been at the dealership for 7 weeks tomorrow. Was just told that the parts are on their way from Germany, but it'll probably be another week or so as they have to go through customs.

https://www.audiworld.com/forums/q5-...olies-3087793/