- The recall impacts 4,616 vehicles across the United States.
- Next year, Audi will roll out an onboard diagnostic system to detect battery module faults.
- Audi doesn’t know of any injuries, crashes, or fires related to the issue in the US.
Several thousand Audi Q5 PHEV and A7 PHEV models need to be recalled in the United States as there’s a possibility their high-voltage battery modules could experience thermal overload, triggering a fire.
Audi says it’s still investigating the root cause of the problem but believes deviations may have occurred during manufacturing of the battery modules at Samsung SDI’s plant in Hungary. The automaker was first notified of four field cases on non-US market cars that experienced thermal events in their battery packs back in August 2023.
Read: Over 6,000 Audi e-tron GTs Have Battery Packs That May Short Circuit And Catch Fire
Earlier this year, Audi was informed of other field cases and decided to collect 50 high-voltage batteries from the field to conduct a lifetime analysis on them. Even though the root cause isn’t fully understood as this analysis is still ongoing, Audi has determined that 4,616 Q5 PHEV and A7 PHEV models in the US should be recalled. Impacted 2022-2023 Q5 models were built from August 10, 2021, to December 10, 2022, while 2022 A7 models involved were produced between July 2, 2021, and May 4, 2022.
Audi is not aware of any injuries, crashes, or fires related to the battery fault in the United States.
Audi will introduce new onboard diagnostic software in the second quarter of 2025, which will detect potential issues with the battery modules and alert the driver before any problems occur. In the interim, impacted vehicles with online services enabled will need to have any modules or high-voltage batteries replaced, should online data indicate a critical fault. If this is the case, owners will be instructed to stop charging their vehicles from external sources and not use the combustion engine to charge the battery.
The same applies to impacted Q5 PHEV and A7 PHEV models without the online data system, but here the owners are advised to stop charging their batteries until the new diagnostic software becomes available.
