DADSQ7

7 hours ago, budgie55 said:

I hope it resolves the issue for you once and for all.

Not to rub salt in wounds but I've also been having fun and games, went in to dealership to confront them, ended up taking car for my own drive and as expected it died and had to get recovery back to the dealership (not my most fun day off work haha). Told them I wouldn't be taking it anywhere until they fixed it. One of their techs to be fair to him pulled out all the stops with Audi UK, using my own logs from VAGCOM with the original faults which wouldn't replicate on the starter generator, they eventually agreed to replacing it. So hoping to have it back by the end of the week or Monday next. Fingers crossed it repairs the issue.

Been quite stressful as they wouldn't even take to extended warranty without the starter generator issuing a fault code. God knows what you do if it never faults, the car would only drive 5 miles or so before dying, so would have ended up with a £30k plus car that was useless (alternative I guess would have been to take to an independent).

That’s a result. Which dealer? 

We have our car home now. Overrode Audi UK who wanted to perform further tests, and had the alternator fitted. All issues gone, so far. Unbelievable. 

We’ll do battle with Audi UK now, and if needed be going to court. 

We have the old battery and the old alternator too. 

need to be getting a large chunk of the £6k back now. It was never the battery, so that’s half, and the alternator is the part number on the bulletin, so should be repaid that too. Utterly disgusting behaviour by Audi.. 

On 9/5/2024 at 11:22 AM, budgie55 said:

So sorry to hear of your frustrations, expense and troubles. These cars nowadays are just too complex, once upon a time if your car was draining battery and failing they would either replace battery, alternator, or find what is causing the drain. Now it is just whatever the computer tells them. I mean what if the generator / alternator is faulty and doesn't log any fault code ever, do you just have a £50k plus (or more) car you simply can never drive more than 20 miles or so. Madness.

Hope you get sorted one way or another, ideally without any more cost to you!

So, we’ve sidestepped Audi UK. They keep procrastinating and swerving the issue, which has become a stand off. 
 

So, instructed dealer to replace the Starter Generator. If it doesn’t work, dunno where to turn next… 

2 hours ago, budgie55 said:

Update day 4:

They can't replace alternator either under Audi UK TSB (as noted in this thread 2 August), or under my extended warranty as the alternator is not displaying a fault code....

No fault code on the alternator (my fault from initial problem as I cleared the codes), despite them driving the car (unknown if driven until it stopped again due to no 12v battery power) faults not re-appeared. Despite 17 other faults relating to:
Engine - 2 faults voltage supply inadequate and engine failed to start (when I got the red stop asap warning and car packed in on the drive due to dead battery)
HVAC (aircon) blower output reduction due to energy management
Databus fault in central electrics
Battery regulator - DC/DC converter - inadequate performance (fault priority 2 in VAGCOM - immediate service appointment)
Steering assist - Due to insufficient voltage
All the child lock motors on rear doors flagging error codes
Can gateway - 6 faults including Battery Mgmt 2 with various 48v activation restrictions / Generator fault (electrical malfunction) / 12v electrical system - failure (stage 1 and stage2) / and Energy Management active (presume due to poor 12v battery voltage)

Not quite sure where to go from here, if alternator never flags a fault code then what do you do; clearly there is a fault creating all the other faults above. Other than to drive the car around until it fails again and hope it flags a fault code on the generator (or buy a new alternator myself).

Absolute madness, lesson to self never clear fault codes EVER AGAIN. ...... may go and drive the car round their carpark tomorrow until it packs in.

😞 
 

Hi, yes this is pretty much where we’ve got to. The AA diagnosed the alternator, Sytner Leicester Audi can’t get the same fault. 
 

We’re told that the data of the diagnostics is now with “the factory”, which is VW. Not had a response for nearly a week now… nearly 7 weeks in, £2,800 for a battery that didn’t need replacing paid which they won’t give back, and a car in pieces. 
 

We’re about to gamble and just pay for the alternator to be replaced. Risky, as if it doesn’t fix it then I’m sure Audi will abandon any further help and mean no chance of any goodwill.. 

Ruled out the battery and voltage converter, so what else could be the issue…. 
 

Beggars belief that they can’t work out what’s wrong within 7 weeks! 
 

by the way, many of the faults listed above came up on ours, the rear door child locks are one that stuck in the memory, as Audi Leicester quoted to replace them!!! Before the battery was fitted and the code cleared for a while. 

@budgie55 sound like when we dropped ours at Leicester.. yes, they need to do their own diagnostics, when they start guessing (guided fault finding) it’s more than annoying. 

Good luck, and hope for your sake the car throws the right error code for them to just get on with it. The document posted further back in this thread suggests that the dealerships can just get on with it without bothering Audi UK, but the error codes have to be just so. If not, they’ll be messing around going back and forth for weeks. 
 

It’s funny really, as I’m not sure what GDPR has to do with it. I could own the vehicle as far as he knows. I thought GDPR was sharing or holding personal data of a person, not a piece of machinery. I must be wrong, but I’ll be having a look at that. In the meantime I’m sure my dad won’t mind giving permission. 

Reported to DVSA,

reply from John Corcoran;

Thank you for your submission.

I note you from your report it is your parents’ vehicle, and you may not be the registered keeper of the vehicle. .Due to general Data Protection Regulations DVSA is only able to discuss a specific vehicle with the registered keeper. 

However, I can advise DVSA is aware of the issue and have conducted investigations with the manufacturer. Currently, there is no action in place, but we are continuing to monitor for further reports etc. I would like to add your report about your parents’ car to the monitoring (this may include releasing vehicle information to other parties/engineers etc) but to do so I would need confirmation of the registered keeper and whosoever’s permission to do so. 

Thank you

On 8/16/2024 at 5:13 PM, DADSQ7 said:

Ok, as was predictable, Audi Technical have instructed Leicester to guess further and have asked us to pay £1,700 to replace the voltage converter… to see if that fixes this !Removed! show. 

We ALL know the faults originate from the alternator but until the computer says so, it’s let’s guess at your expense time. 

I suspect we’ve replaced the battery for no good reason, and now the voltage converter. When we’ve paid for everything downstream of the alternator, and it still doesn’t work, they’ll replace the alternator. By then we’ll have paid best part of £5k. Wouldn’t want to bet my house on ever seeing that again. 

Little update now we’re firmly into week six. Leicester have done the donoring of a voltage converter (at their cost 🎉) and then test driven it, to make sure it’s all ok. Fault returned very quickly! 
Now we’re waiting for Audi Technical who have referred it to the “factory”, to tell us what we knew 6 carless weeks, £2,800, and a load of waffle ago! 
 

Donoring parts IS just guessing. They can call it guided fault finding, but it’s just guessing, at your expense. Don’t be fobbed off by them doing this, it’s just simple incompetence, and/or badly designed systems on VW group cars. 

This was diagnosed as an alternator fault 6 weeks ago by the AA, and Audi UK had the audacity to say that I was guessing! 

@NikHussain Leicester were not aware of the document posted on here back in 2 Aug. This is Sytner Group as is Slough it seems. It says make sure staff are aware. Listers seem to make their staff aware as every one we called knew straight away. 
When I provided Leicester with the document, they realised what system it was one, evidently one they weren’t reading. They have since acknowledged the point, but insist it’s not the alternator. 
I would say though that this appears to be only Q7 related, but I suppose if your part number is the same then maybe it applies… but don’t hold your breath. 

Who at Audi UK have you been speaking to? 
 

If they’re anything like Leicester Audi, they’ll start with “guided fault finding”, make you pay for the pleasure of them trying parts from other cars on site. (I’d hate to be buying the cars on site).

then when you’ve paid the best part of £5k, they’ll realise it can only be the alternator even though the specific fault code hasn’t been thrown up. Then, after 2 months they’ll try to find one, and you’ll have a battle to try to get the £5k back, as Audi UK say it’s all a coincidence. All the time you’ll not get a Courtesy car, and the dealer blames Audi UK, and AUDI UK blame the dealer, with both of them blaming Audi Technical department (to whom you cannot communicate with). Wan kers all of them. 
 

Anyway, good luck. Keep us posted. 

1 hour ago, budgie55 said:

Cheers DADSQ7, 12 miles will get me to the garage which is around 9 miles or so away which solves one problem. When I checked the lithium battery yesterday it was around 50%, that may have moved today. Don’t want to run down the lithium as they’re damn expensive to replace so I hear.

 

Am I right that once the 12v is charged, the car will / may also charge the LIPO up further or is that just an urban myth? Presume there would need to be some sort of DC/DC converter involved (which I believe the cars have)?

I really don’t know about that, but yes the battery is £1,920 before fitting, as we’ve found out. The voltage converter is £1,000 plus fitting, and the alternator is over £2k. Hope your warranty covers everything as I was told the 48v battery was classed as a wear and tear item… 

1 hour ago, budgie55 said:

Ah well, 2018 (68 uk plate) Q7 here 29,000 miles just had yellow warning yesterday electronics failure take to workshop. Booked in to Bolton Audi but 1 week this coming Friday; took my chances and drove to work today, car failed with red lights, power steering etc going as I pulled on the drive at home thankfully. Car now won’t start so charging 12v battery. 

Hooked up to VAGCOM and have the alternator issue so pretty sure it is the same issue, no idea if it will be covered by any recall given UK not recalled yet. But thankfully have Audi extended warranty, only issue now is how to get the car to the dealers?! One for the morning…. Pretty disappointed in this car since I had it from nearly new and will likely be my last Audi after owning several now. 

If you charge the 12v battery, it “should” get you a fair way. We did 12 miles in that state. However, I’ve heard that potentially charging to too high a voltage could damage the voltage converter, so be careful.

Best of luck. Keep us posted. 
 

Ok, as was predictable, Audi Technical have instructed Leicester to guess further and have asked us to pay £1,700 to replace the voltage converter… to see if that fixes this !Removed! show. 

We ALL know the faults originate from the alternator but until the computer says so, it’s let’s guess at your expense time. 

I suspect we’ve replaced the battery for no good reason, and now the voltage converter. When we’ve paid for everything downstream of the alternator, and it still doesn’t work, they’ll replace the alternator. By then we’ll have paid best part of £5k. Wouldn’t want to bet my house on ever seeing that again. 

13 minutes ago, Mark2 said:

If you seriously cannot get an alternator I can let yiu have my spare which is sitting on my garage shelf on the basis you replace it when there is one available. Let me know 

Hey, that’s so kind of you to offer. Shouldn’t come to that as we’re awaiting a courtesy vehicle, and they’re not getting it back until they have sorted. 
 

if we get nowhere, I’ll come back to you. Thanks again 

On 8/7/2024 at 4:12 PM, DADSQ7 said:

Hi, quick update. So… ours isn’t the alternator… it’s the battery. No warranty cover for the battery, so a bill of £2800 if they can find one… 

To be fair, the latest chap has been excellent. I will be looking for some goodwill from Audi UK, but other than that we’ll get it back and then wait for the alternator to go wrong at some point I guess. 
 

I will be checking that the alternator is still the original one once I get it back, just to check there’s no funny business going on though.

Good afternoon fellow frustrated Audi owners! 

soooo, had battery replaced. Paid £2,820, and drove away yesterday. 

Audi UK didn’t come through in time for any recompense, as they keep trying to get Leicester to take the hit. On this point I squarely blame Audi UK. Why would the franchisee take the hit??? Not that the dealership has come away with any credit from this sorry state of affairs. 

Anyway, less than 24 hours on, IT’S BACK AT LEICESTER. What a !Removed! surprise! My dad had a very firm conversation with them yesterday, before we drove away, to ask why the hell Leicester would let him drive away in a car with a known fault, and asked if they at all cared about the safety of him and my mum, or is this just money led. It’s quite apparent it all money driven, with no regard to safety.

Right on cue, this morning the battery light comes on. He drives it straight there before the inevitable occurs. 

So, £2,820 down and no car for 4 weeks, no courtesy car, and still Leicester and Audi UK put money ahead of safety. Leicester have now said they’ll get an alternator!!! Good luck finding one. It’s all a cover up, and a money loss mitigation decision by lawyers in the UK. USA has responded appropriately, and I guess that decision sucks all the alternators from the world stocks. 

I am told the battery shuts down if the message from the alternator goes awry. So the new battery should be ok. Great! 👍 

So, in summary, I told them what was wrong 4 weeks ago as the AA diagnosed it. I tried to tell them there was this warranty extension. It took 3 weeks before they decided to check, as I sent them the internal notice kindly posted in this thread. Then it’s been nothing but waffle. I can only conclude that Audi UK must be in some sort of financial difficulty to not just sort this. They then diagnose the battery after doing a swap out from another car, charge us for the pleasure, and declare it mended as for five minutes the car worked ok. I told them the battery was clearly dead due to the alternator (which is known to be faulty), but oh no, they “have” to follow what Audi UK tell them. Logic doesn’t seem to be in abundance anymore!!  

I really would like to join the communications to the various places you have all reported this to. 

Is there any traction with media? BBC, etc. if there’s any current reference or contacts, let me know. 

As for DVSA etc. happy to chip in, but like any government agency, they don’t have the teeth, funds nor inclination to stand up to a global company like Audi. No different to water regulators… 

The only way is media coverage, reviews, reputation and walking away from the brand ultimately. 

Share price is the only real measure of success for these companies. Headlines tend to focus the minds of execs and investors alike.

TBC…. 

Oh, and in reference to Mark2’s post. Ours has now got error codes for the rear child locks following the battery failure. We are hoping they clear properly with the new battery. 

Hi, quick update. So… ours isn’t the alternator… it’s the battery. No warranty cover for the battery, so a bill of £2800 if they can find one… 

To be fair, the latest chap has been excellent. I will be looking for some goodwill from Audi UK, but other than that we’ll get it back and then wait for the alternator to go wrong at some point I guess. 
 

I will be checking that the alternator is still the original one once I get it back, just to check there’s no funny business going on though.

3 hours ago, MikeyW said:

I would just sack off Leicester and get the car to Coventry.  Leicester clearly have no clue and their proposal to charge you to investigate a known fault is laughable.  Cov are Listers and their guys at Stratford were superb.

Hi, yes, we’ve considered that. However I seem to have a sensible person talking to me now. Taken 2 weeks but he’s listening to me instead of treating me like a numb skull. I have provided the bulletin kindly posted further back on n the thread dated 27 June, and he’s toddled off to investigate. He did then empathise with how it looked, based on the information we have. 
 

The PR code of 9G8 is key. If this is included on the build sticker in the  boot, or the one on the inside cover of the owners manual, and it’s the alternator that has failed (confirmed by diagnostics) then I don’t think there much argument really now. Ours has this. My debate is whether the battery has gone too, and then if the battery was killed by the alternator (which is highly probable). My beef is now that they needed me to indemnify them to guess by a parts swap with another car… 

We’ll see soon enough. 

15 hours ago, 88-RS6 said:

Hello,

For the 48V issue it is confirmed that all vehicles with certain build codes are covered fully which covers most models from production 2020+. I’ve successfully had Cheltenham to get Audi UK to fully compensate the cost of labour and parts.

I took a copy of the internal document with approval from my Audi dealer to help all users from the UK out on this forum.

I hope this helps anyone that’s stuck. 
 

Anyone wish to use Cheltenham Audi I highly recommend. Point of contact is service manager Nigel and he’s fully aware that I have been contributing in this forum.

Thanks 

Many thanks for this, it’ll be very interesting to see how long it takes Leicester Audi to catch up. It’s quite apparent that the service managers should be ensuring their staff are up to date. I have repeatedly asked if they are aware of this issue (regardless of whether our car is affected) and they are just unaware! Now that Audi UK customer services are involved I’d guess they are not too happy with the dealer for getting to to the point where we have “unnecessarily escalated it to CSC” as the point of the internal bulletin is to prevent it!! 
 

Fair play to Lister Audi. We’ve rung around and had nothing but helpful people look it up for us… and confirm it should be appropriate to our Q7. 
 

I am tempted, once we’re agreed it needs doing under warranty, to insist that the car is transported to Coventry Lister so that they get the warrant income… 

Evening! 
 

An update for you. Apparently the diagnostic tests were sent to Audi UK. They have asked the dealership to try fitting a 48v battery from a “stocked” vehicle to see if the battery is the issue. The dealership can’t carry on negotiating anything with Audi UK until they follow their instructions. However the dealership require us to provide authorisation for 6 hours technician time at £210 an hour to try the 48v battery from a random car, “to see” if that’s the issue! 
 

am I wrong in thinking we shouldn’t have to indemnify the dealership to “try” another battery for them to diagnose the issue? Over £1200 gamble!!! 

Ive said no so far. It makes no sense as the Coventry dealership says the car requires a replacement alternator anyway as it’s coming up on their system. 
 

im thinking we should just flat bed it to Coventry…. It’d cost less. 

Audi really are something else. Charging the customer as they can’t diagnose the issue… 
 

Quick update. Leicester haven’t done a diagnostic yet… so the car hasn’t moved… 

We have however been in contact with Audi Coventry, where the Q7 was last serviced (but too far to drive to on just a charged 12v battery and a failed alternator). They brought up the car on their system and the system told her that it was “due a replacement alternator due to a faulty batch back in 2019”. 
 

Good to find that it’s showing up as due… but raises so many questions as to why there hasn’t been a recall! They know the cars affected, the computer says they need replacing, but Audi seem to be just waiting for them to fail… It might well be because there’s only 1 showing in stock at Audi UK… 

I’ll update as soon as Leicester pull their finger out. 

4 hours ago, Steph1234 said:

So sorry to hear this has happened. It makes me so angry on your behalf as I know how it feels. I have an email from Bristol Audi telling me the warranty is only on Q7s (this is a lie it’s on more models but it would help you I hope). Would you like a copy @RKaur @DADSQ7? 

Hi Steph, that’d be very kind of you. I’ll DM you. My dad’s Q7 is at Leicester Sytner Audi now. Obviously they won’t entertain discussing this until they’ve done their £140 diagnostics, but I’m certain it’s this issue, so I’m getting my ducks in a row… ready for battle. 
 

Once they capitulate I’ll get them to comment on whether they would support someone in an A3 with the issue.. hope you’re ok. 

Hello! Sadly my parents 2019 Q7 was struck by this today. They are quite shook up by it to be honest. Cut out with no warning! How can a car not warn you the battery isn’t charging! My ‘72 mini has a red light FFS…

I’m going to sort this for my parents, and I’m very grateful to have found this thread. The possible cost to sort has them even more worried… 

I’ve DM’d 88-RS6.. good post from the other day… hope I can gather some info from here for when I go to the dealership on Monday… 

if anyone has something official in writing from any dealership referring to the work being done under this 7 year cover, I’d be very grateful to have a copy, to hopefully shorten the debate I foresee coming with the dealer…  

I must say, Steph’s post a few hours ago is worrying. Once this is sorted I think I’ll be helping my parents sell their Q7 😬, but I know they won’t. Dads had Audis since 1988… a the one he bought new then, an A6 2.2E Avant, went through 3 gearboxes in a few weeks, but then went on to nearly 200k miles… 

Cheers, Luke