My 2021 Sportback recently joined the legion of bricked e-trons out there. Same symptoms I see referenced by others in this thread - the car suddenly shudders, the drive system shuts down, and then a long sequence of failure messages appear on the dash referencing most of the car's electrical features. Audi provided towing service to transport the car to my dealer 2 weeks ago and there's been no indication of progress since then.
Here is the information I've received from my dealer which, in my view, should give anyone considering an e-tron purchase serious pause:
(1) There are currently 3 "dead" e-trons in my dealer's service department. The technicians have no idea at this point what the problems are, or whether the problems are similar across these three cars.
(2) At this point, the approach being used is largely trial and error. The dealer technicians get on the phone with Audi engineering and go through days of "try this - try that" tasks
(3) This problem is common enough that dealers are forming cross-dealer working groups to share what they are encountering and what remedial steps they've tried. My dealer said they are holding regular collaboration calls with two other dealers.
(4) I was told yesterday that Audi engineering has decided to ship them a new diagnostic device to help isolate the problem(s). They have no idea how long it will take to get this device, but acknowledged that no further work will be done on my car until it arrives.
(5) My dealer indicated that this problem of dead e-trons is widespread and unresolved enough that Audi is treating it as critical. They assure me that the e-tron platform is considered so strategically vital to Audi that they can't afford for this to go on indefinitely and become more public. I suppose I take some minor comfort in that.
(6) Audi dealer technicians have no idea how address problems of the nature and complexity that e-trons can present. Virtually all the problems referenced in this thread would require involvement by Audi corporate engineering.
(7) It's been made clear to me that I'll only get frustrated if I mark time for this repair process in hours or days. This will almost certainly be a matter of weeks and very possibly months.
I purchased my e-tron in January, 2021 and have very much liked the car over the past year. Problems have been minor, and the car has proven ideal for the type of largely around-town driving I do. This experience, however, has me pretty concerned over whether I made a bad decision in purchasing the car. In short, the e-tron is fantastic until it isn't, and then it really isn't.
I'm sympathetic with earlier posts pointing out that it's not unusual for first year models to experience glitches. But 2021 was the third model year of the e-tron Sportback, and my growing sense is that there is a broad and little-understood array of electrical problems surfacing in the e-tron, any one of which can effectively take the car out of commission. Dealer service technicians remain novices on the car, and they lack the information, training or tools to resolve most e-tron problems independently.
Many of us purchased electric vehicles in the belief that our cars would have fewer points of failure than ICE vehicles. While that may be partly true, I think we're finding that EV problems tend to be more complex and debilitating for at least the time being.
