NHTSA Complaint #11465690 — 2022 AUDI Q5 SPORTBACK

We were driving home on the interstate when suddenly we got an “Electrical system malfunction. Safely stop vehicle!” notification. We pulled over to the shoulder and were able to restart the vehicle but the check engine light was on. We were able to get to the nearest exit when the error appeared again. This time as I was pulling over, the screen went blank and I completely lost power to the vehicle. Thankfully this occurred in a very remote area and there were not a lot of cars around. If this had happened at a place without a shoulder (ex a construction zone, or a narrow winding mountain road) we would have had no place to pull over given the time between when we saw the error and when we lost power to the vehicle was only about ten seconds. At best we become a traffic obstruction. At worst if this occurred in a location with poor visibility we would be rear ended at extremely high velocity. Dealer diagnosed the issue and stated there is a tsb from audi. The fix, however, is only coming end of q3 2022. We are supposed to drive a car that could shut down at any moment in the meantime and just hope it doesn’t happen again, the dealer could not provide a fix they simply cleared the error codes. Dealer said they have had 3 other 2022 q5e come in with the same issue. The only indication of the failure came with the “Electrical system malfunction. Safely stop vehicle!” error message. It appeared suddenly and we had no prior indication from the vehicle that something was wrong. We did have a check engine light after the error appeared the first time.