JSakaBuck

After reading of Audi's juggling of options and packages for '22 and '23, I'm beginning to realize just how unique my A8 PHEV truly is. With my option packages (night vision, laser lights, special leather, wood trim, etc.) my A8 really seems to be a "one of one" car. With 24 months into my 42 month lease, I'm seriously considering buying the car after my lease expires. And, since I really haven't fell in love with anything with which to replace it, a buyout may be best for me. Also, given the price of gasoline these days, my plug-in hybrid has been giving me the best of both ICE and BEV worlds. Plugging in each day affords me weeks without the ICE kicking on, leading to 800-1,200 miles between fill-ups. Loving my car here.

Omeletpants

angrypengu

I don't mean to...err, take the edge off of your high, but I certainly would not recommend buying out your PHEV. This is the problem with PHEVs, and even electric cars of the future (PS, I full well appreciate the downsides of ICE engines too from rubber cracking to direct injection carbon buildup)...

The issue with all of our A8s (PHEVs or not) is that the underlying battery chemistry is not LFP. This means that even if you don't drive the dang thing that serious battery degradation has already occurred by year 4+. I have *zero* understanding of how the D5 PHEV performs once battery capacity plummets other than a serious loss in range but what is the worst case here? Does the vehicle require you to replace the battery?

3-4 years after the D5 has been released and we now know the 48V LI battery for the regular gas vehicle has dropped in pricing from $3800 USD to about $1800 USD which is progress! I dare not even guess what the larger PHEV LI battery costs...

This is my issue with electric cars which is to state that an ICE engine's deterioration, if garaged and not driven, may last decades (yes, seals will go, of course), but lithium ion batteries degrade when it's too cold, too hot, and not even used. It's a sad state of affairs (biased angrypengu here), but the fact is that I'd be a tad worried about keeping a PHEV. Mercedes S class "e" owners (PHEV) learned the hard way...

*I have zero idea if the 48V LI battery in the regular gas version will ever need replacing. I mean, even if it has a capacity of 0, does the car care? (with vehicles that don't have MH3/active cooling/predictive suspension). The whole point of the 48V battery is for the BSG/reduction of CO2...so when that battery dies, do we need to replace it? I'm hoping not...

Anmol Singh Sandhu

I have 2019 A8 with 60k km on it. I had some electrical issues with my car such as sunroof blind won’t close, infotainment system doesn’t remember stuff even after the update, and the worst of all most of the electronics shut off while driving like all the safety features and stuff(This happened twice). Most of the stuff was resolved after a simple restart but some faults took a night to go away. Since my manufacture warranty was about to be done, I took my car to the dealership to get it checked and they told me all that was happening because of the 48v battery and they need to change it. Now they have ordered it but since Audi doesn’t have it at the moment they ordered it directly through the supplier. My car has been at the dealership for 2 months now and I don’t mind waiting if it means everything will be repaired properly.
So yeah, in my case 48v needed to be changed.

leomaestro

I wanted to probe the B&O advanced audio availability for the Canadian market and was surprised to see that the '23 A8L models offer this upgrade for $5,500 in Canada. I went through this configurator and got. https://www.audi.ca/ca/web/en/models...ild-price.html. Not sure what was the rationale for the US market to not include the advanced audio option but it's a pitty.

derfA8L

Yeah, it appears Canada gets more key options than the U.S. like matrix digital headlights, predictive active suspension, B&O Advanced and Daytona Gray as a standard available exterior color (I love that color). Very frustrating. Since the U.S. 2023 A8 build site isn’t up yet, perhaps they’re revisiting the option availability issue in light of what’s being made available for the Canadian market…Maybe 😒.