Audi has jumped to assuage prospective purchasers’ concerns over steering failures on its new Q5 at its local launch last week. The failures were reported here.
Two Q5s suffered steering failures during the drive program last week. Since then a third Q5 has failed during launch activities. The Q5s suffered power steering leaks, resulting in loss of servo assistance while the vehicles were being evaluated by journalists.
Both of the initial instances occurred within a kilometre of each other on the third leg of the launch drive program. All Q5s affected were 3.0 TDI V6 turbodiesel models.
The cars had just completed a long section of unsealed road from Yarrangobilly Caves in southern NSW but were actually on bitumen at the time sufficient steering fluid had leaked from the system for assistance to be lost — immediately, in the case of one vehicle.
In the vehicle transporting this writer at the time, the symptoms initially sounded like a dying turbocharger, but the driver reported inconsistent steering loads, during cornering. After pulling up by the side of the road, it was apparent that the problem lay with the power steering pump and inspection under the bonnet revealed power steering fluid leaking into the splash tray below the engine.
Further down the road, two other journalists were pulled over with a Q5 that had suddenly lost all power steering assistance, mid-corner. Both cars were left in the hands of Audi’s support team and the journalists were ferried in a support vehicle to the end of the route.
Further down the road, two other journalists were pulled over with a Q5 that had suddenly lost all power steering assistance, mid-corner. Both cars were left in the hands of Audi’s support team and the journalists were ferried in a support vehicle to the end of the route.
A third instance of the technical problem took place on Monday of this week and involved another Q5 TDI V6 that had been driven over the same route for the launch. That’s three out of the four cars of this specification taking part in the launch.
Audi’s MD, Joerg Hofmann and General Manager for Corporate Communications, Anna Burgorf, promised that as soon as investigations had revealed the nature of the problem, the media would be informed.
Audi reports the problem is limited to Q5s with the 3.0-litre TDI V6 and Dynamic Steering. Also, it seems that the fault has not been experienced in any other market.
“It seems to be a problem only with three-litre TDi vehicles and it is a servo-return hose that is leaking,” Burgdorf told the Carsales Network.
“It appears that the leak only occurs after very dynamic offroad driving — and then there are impact stresses effectively on the return hose. That is what is causing the hose to be weakened and leaking as a result.”
Audi says 64 Dynamic Steering-equipped V6 TDI Q5s have arrived Down Under. It will retrofit “optimised” hoses to the vehicles. As of March 18, it claimed no such vehicles had been delivered to customers.
The concern is that the fault had not been discovered during Audi’s testing of the vehicle — either during global durability tests or by the local arm when it had two cars in Australia prior to the launch. Could it be that the V6 TDI models weren’t tested for durability in that specification — right-hand drive with Dynamic Steering?
According to Burgdorf, the local arm has reported the situation to Audi’s head office in Ingolstadt. Audi has stated categorically that it believes four-cylinder variants of the Q5 are unaffected.
Of the right-hand drive markets for the Q5 (UK, NZ and Australia, with Japan a market for petrol-only models), Australia is potentially the toughest in an offroad sense.
Audi did not conduct durability testing of the Q5 in Australia, but the local distribution network has clocked up 20,000km of driving in the Q5 prior to the car’s launch. The carmaker claims 30 per cent of that distance was “offroad”.
In fact, the program was intended to evaluate the Q5’s fitness to run another Trans-Continental Crossing such as the Q7 has completed twice.
German engineers who had taken part in the Q7 Trans-Continental Crossings were confident the Q5 would cope with the same roads the Q7 had tackled, Burgdorf said.
Audi says the “optimised” hose fitment will not require a recall.
“At this stage we don’t need to undertake a recall and also… it may be that this problem never reoccurs if people don’t drive it offroad and don’t drive it quite hard and fast,” says Burgdorf. “That, for us, is not relevant. We will fit this optimised hose to every car.
“Things can happen to cars — very strangely — at launches, because they are under more stress and pressure than, normally, any other car, but three cars… It’s not a one-off,” she said.
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