There are 8 owner-reported driver assist & adas complaints for the 2023 Audi Q5in NHTSA's database. These are unverified consumer reports and may not reflect confirmed defects.
I owned the car for two weeks when I had my dog in the front and it automatic braked going down the freeway. It threw him into the screen and broke it, luckily he was ok. (He was belted in.) This has happened three more times and been inspected but they are not able to reproduce the problem. This only happens when the dog is in the car with me. This last time, the dog hit the dash and screen again and broke it, and I had to pay to have it replaced again. (Thankfully dog just fine.) They keep saying no fault found because they can’t get it to do it on their test drives. This is a serious safety issue and could cause an accident by someone rear ending me. The roads aren’t wet, and nothing is around when it has happened each time. They turned down the presensor this time, so i am hoping this helps.
3 times this vehicle did not try to stop in time to keep from rear ending a vehicle. The imminent crash warning would come on but the vehicle did not try to stop. This model is supposed to apply the brakes on its own to keep from rear ending someone but it did not apply brakes. If I hadn’t taken hard and immediate braking action we would have rear ended vehicles. The vehicle has an $5800.00 option to brake in emergency situations. There have been at least 3 instances where the vehicle will not engage with lane keeping attempts while being on. This vehicle will also not notify the driver that the vehicle is leaving its lane even though it has lane keeping technology options turned on and purchased.
When making a left turn at green light, 4 lane road with oncoming traffic, part way into the turn SUV abruptly slammed on brakes came to immediate dead stop; driver & front seat passenger were restrained by seat belts. Literally SUV was almost rear-ended, plus oncoming traffic "was still oncoming" at 40+ mph and had to steer clear of SUV that came to dead stop partway into intersection. Clearly a defect with the driver assistance automatic breaking system. Easily could have been serious, multi-vehicle, possibly fatal accident.
Happens weekly, the car breaks randomly when making a left turn, but it slams on the breaks to where you feel like you’ve made impact. It does this in the middle of the intersection and we could be hit head on or rear ended. It continues to happen, it has been in for service at least 3 times over the past year and Audi continues to say there isn’t a problem. Yet people are complaining about this all over social media, and Audi does have a fix for this on their other models, just not the Q5 which is what we are leasing. Please help! We are in danger and are nervous every time we drive this car!
Audi pre-sense slammed on brakes on a dry empty road while I was driving between 45-50mph. Had there been a car behind me, as there usually is in this location, I would certainly have been rear-ended. As it was, my head, neck and back got a heavy jolt, and of course the whole thing distracted me from safely driving the car. I had to pull over to catch my breath (just because it was scary) and figure out how to turn the thing off for the drive home. The dealer checked the computer system and reported that there were no "faults" recorded there. In other words, the system is working "properly". Dealer cannot turn it permanently off because it's a SAFETY feature. The only way to prevent future dangerous deployments is to navigate through 3 layers of touchscreens to turn it off *each time I start the car*, but this has to be done every trip. I have had the brakes erroneously applied several times at lower speeds, one of those times (in the 2018 model) the seatbelt reeled me back into the seat squeezing my chest. Again, no obstacle or hazard of any kind was present, just the hazard of erratic and aggressive car automation.
Car suddenly applies brakes and sounds alarms when driving out of a sloping driveway or parking lot. It appears that the sensors point at the pavement at the inflection point of the sloped driveway/road and detects that as an obstacle. This happens regularly at certain parking lots - all the blinking and braking make it very difficult to navigate into the traffic lane safely. Audi dealership assures me this is normal. It also suddenly brakes (sometimes) and sounds alarms as I back out of my own gently sloped driveway. I am always paying attention to my surroundings and not operating a phone or doing other activities while I'm driving. There is unquestionably NO hazard or obstacle. The risk for damage to my neck is fairly low at these speeds, but when I'm backing I generally look over my shoulder, and a good jolt (even at low speeds) is pretty unpleasant and could definitely cause injury.
when stopped and proceeding to make a left turn the pre sense system activated the emergency braking almost causing the car behind me to hit me.. There were no vehicles approaching me in front or on the left side.. A car was passing me on the right at a slow speed. This has happened numerous times. It has been into the Audi dealership previously for the same problem. I spoke with Audi USA Today who said there is nothing they can do and that maybe I should shut the pre sense off..A less than brilliant and acceptable solution.
This has happened several times. After waiting for traffic to clear to make a left turn, as I start to accelerate, the Audi Presense triggers (message comes up) and slams on the brakes. There was no traffic that could have caused any hazard. It could have left me stranded in oncoming traffic. There are many other people reporting this same issue on Audi forums.
Complaints are unverified consumer reports submitted to NHTSA. A high complaint count may reflect vehicle popularity, not defect severity. Data sourced from NHTSA public records.
Data synced from NHTSA on Apr 26, 2026